Posted on 07/07/2012 11:20:03 PM PDT by thecodont
Click a few keys, exchange a few numbers, and it’s done. With just a mobile phone and a registration with Safaricom, Kenya’s mobile service giant, you can pay for anything in seconds – no cash, no long journeys to towns to reach a bank, and no long lines when you get there. This is m-Pesa, the revolutionary approach to banking which is changing economies across Africa. The service allows customers and businesses to pay for anything without needing cash, a bank account, or even a permanent address. In today’s Digital Diversity, in honour of its recent fifth birthday, we present a beginner’s guide to m-Pesa and examine its implications for financial access in developing economies.
[...]
By Olivia O’Sullivan
In the developed world, we are used to the idea that we created the model of industrial and economic progress which other countries must follow. Many of our big ideas about development rest on the assumption that the West cracked the formula for economic progress sometime in the 19th century, and what we need now is for the developing world to ‘catch up’. Even the language we use encapsulates this idea, in the division between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’. But new innovations are challenging the idea that development requires handing ideas down from developed to developing. In banking and finance, the big ideas in cashless transfers and mobile, flexible exchanges are not to be found in Geneva or London or New York. A revolution in mobile money transfer has occurred, but not in these financial centres. Instead, it’s happened in Kenya, with m-Pesa.
The service was developed between Safaricom and Vodafone, and launched in 2007. And it’s not just something used in cities or by big commercial interests.
(Excerpt) Read more at newswatch.nationalgeographic.com ...
I read the article.
This smells to high heaven of potential scamming.
I got an email from the former Finance Minister of Nigeria, and he wants to use me to help him move $200M, I am going to email him back in the morning. I think I get to keep like 10% or something.
Easy money!
Seriously, if the whole African continent was cut off from the Internet we wouldn’t miss much. Add Russia and eastern europe to that list too, LOL
I have read an interesting article in the June 2012 Technology Review on the role the internet played in the Libyan uprising. I don’t know if it was there or somewhere else, but apparantly 2 million out of 7 million were on Facebook. Sorry, no link.
A scam for Obama campaign contributions?
Sure...virtual credits, eh?
http://www.gamegoldbase.com/
*snip*
“But new innovations are challenging the idea that development requires handing ideas down from developed to developing. In banking and finance, the big ideas in cashless transfers and mobile, flexible exchanges are not to be found in Geneva or London or New York. A revolution in mobile money transfer has occurred, but not in these financial centres. Instead, it’s happened in Kenya, with m-Pesa.” */snip*
Geneva or London or New York no need for any of silly developed worlds. But golly-gee we sure will need a central place to look over all this, maybe like the UN? Yeah...
I bet a world common wage and tax would be the way to go, too? Don’t ya think?
Yeah, the system will last just until someone seriously punks it.
“So how does it work? m-Pesa relies on a network of small shop-front retailers, who register to be m-Pesa agents. Customers come to these retailers and pay them cash in exchange for loading virtual credit onto their phone, known as e-float. E-float can be swapped and transferred between mobile users with a simple text message and a system of codes. The recipient of e-float takes her mobile phone into her nearest retailer when she wants to cash in, and swaps her text message code back for physical money. There are already more m-Pesa agents in Kenya than there are bank branches.”
Sounds a bit risky - no mention of safeguards or cost. It’s basically a poor man’s bank.
And the article reminds me of the Rush-McNabb episode where the liberal media breaks its back bending backwards to aggrandize any small achievement by blacks - A type of unconscious guilt-ridden racism.
The author fits the stereotype to a T.
Here’s her bio...
“Olivia O’Sullivan has worked for the Guardian newspaper, the Sudan team of the UN Peacekeeping Department and with the London NGO Waging Peace. She is an MPhil in International Relations at Cambridge University.”
After a bit more digging, I discovered that the system was created and developed by two british companies, Vodaphone and Sagentia.
http://www.sagentia.com/resources/case-studies/2012/m-pesa.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa
I guess Ms O’Sullivan couldn’t be bothered to do 5 minutes of research - it would have burst her bubble.
I used to like NatGeo - but the environuts and the lefties have taken it over and turned it into another PC rag.
“The service allows customers and businesses to pay for anything without needing cash”
Ahhhh, those crazy Kenyans. If you know one, you know ‘em all.
Hey, is that where the trillions from the U.S. Treasury went? Does Obama have an account there?
All it took was stupid congressmen voting in the late night hours to “pay now” and with one click away it all went.
“This is m-Pesa, the revolutionary approach to banking which is changing economies across Africa. The service allows customers and businesses to pay for anything without needing cash, a bank account, or even a permanent address.”
Yes, this proves it - Obama’s from Kenya.
This is how he’s running the US - the only difference is that he’s leaving the American taxpayers holding the bill.
“I used to like NatGeo - but the environuts and the lefties have taken it over and turned it into another PC rag.”
AGREE 100%.
Here in the US, one example is the "pre-paid debit card", which you can buy at many stores and supermarkets. The only difference here is that the "debit card" is electronic rather than plastic, and that the repository for the cash is distributed rather than centralized.
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