The problem
Most Kenyans had no bank account but did have a mobile phone, and urban workers were sending cash home by bus driver and hand.
The innovation
A system that stores and transfers value as SMS-based credit through a network of ordinary shopkeepers acting as cash-in and cash-out agents — banking without banks or smartphones.
How it worked
Value moves between phone numbers over the mobile network; the agent network converts between electronic value and cash, which is the part that made it work at village scale.
Why it mattered
Adopted by a large majority of Kenyan adults, studied for measurable effects on household savings and poverty, and exported to other markets.
The legacy
Kenya became the reference case for mobile financial infrastructure, and much of the world's later mobile-money design followed its agent model.
You use this today
Paying, saving and sending money from a basic phone.
Sources
M-PESA deployment and agent network records
Primary recordThe long-run poverty and gender impacts of mobile money (Science, 2016)
Scholarship
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