Mpesa

MoneyGram, Vodacom give Tanzanians a new way to receive funds directly into mobile accounts

MoneyGram, a global provider of innovative money transfer and payment services, and Vodacom, an African mobile communications company, have announced that Vodacom subscribers in…

African mobile money could produce $1.5-billion in fees alone by 2019

According to a report released by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the use of mobile financial services in sub-Saharan Africa to perform tasks like…

Vodacom to deploy M-Pesa linked prepaid EMV cards

Digital security company Gelmato has announced that it is going to deploy prepaid EMV banking cards to complement Vodacom’s m-pesa mobile wallet service in…

Africa’s mobile banking apps are a serious weapon in their war against the telcos

“The money that goes through the MTN eco-system in one month is more than the money that gone through all the commercial banks since…

Don’t burn your wallet: why SA hasn’t reached its mobile, cashless future (yet)

When it comes to technologies that have failed to deliver on the hype that preceded them, it’s pretty difficult to beat mobile money in…

Africa to fall from top spot as global mobile payments pass $235bn

Africa has led the world in mobile payments from the very start. A lack of wired infrastructure and large numbers of unbanked people with…

Kenya to start taxing mobile transactions

The Kenyan government has announced plans to implement at 10% tax on mobile money payments, including those made via MPesa. According to The Next…

Who will win the mobile payment wars?

Mobile payment has been a massive technology talking point over the past two years as hardware manufacturers wizen up to the fact that more…

MPesa: What does Kenya’s mobile darling look like five years on?

When MPesa launched five years ago, only the most optimistic would’ve thought that it would turn into the economic force of nature it is…

340m people to transfer money via mobile by 2016

Kenya gave the world hope for the future of mobile money with MPesa. After all, over 20% of the country’s GDP is moved through…

What kind of disruption does Africa’s tech scene really need?

What is it really to disrupt, or what is a disruptive innovation? And to put it in the African context, what does ‘disruption’ mean…

A geek at the helm: Memeburn’s interview with Vodacom CEO Pieter Uys

It’s not often that a geek rises to the top of a multi-billion dollar company. These are spots frequently filled by accountants or lawyers….

How M-Pesa disrupts entire economies

Back in 2011, I was asked to give my thoughts on what I thought would trend in mobile within between then and 2020. One…

Why Mpesa is still a financial disruptor

Farhad Manjoo makes a compelling argument for why the real winners of the payments revolution are the same players we already know, the credit…

Necessity is the mother of invention: Why utility beats ‘cool’ in Africa

It is said that necessity is the mother of invention and indeed that could perfectly describe Africa where it comes to innovation, particularly on…

Africa’s mobile operators need to be more disruptive

Generally speaking, in the 90s, Africa’s mobile network operators (MNOs) were highly disruptive. In this last decade however, they have continued to decrease in…

NFC is the future of African mobile money

Mobile money has made more of an impact in Africa than a number of other emerging market regions. In fact, through services like Safricom’s…

Africa: Turning the tech world upside down (Part 1)

In business white space is defined as a place, “…where rules are vague, authority is fuzzy, budgets are non existent, and strategy is unclear…”…

How mobile money is bridging the gap to online payments in Kenya

Mobile Money has come a long way in the last few years. Kenyan mobile network operator, Safaricom, introduced its MPesa service in 2007 and…

The key to USSD growth in Southern Africa

USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data), has enormous potential to deliver new products and services to mobile customers in sub-Saharan Africa, but has yet to…

How over-regulation has stifled the pace of mobile money adoption in Africa

In a continent where less than 20 percent of Africa’s population has a bank account and where latent demand for money services is so…

Why Kenya’s M-Pesa won’t work anywhere else

It’s the runaway success story: From a standing start just four years ago, over 15-million Kenyans now use the M-Pesa mobile money service to…

4 very different mobile payment services

Mobile payments may be the next big tech gold rush, depending on who you listen to. For something getting so much hype, and with…

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