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M-Pesa, launched in Kenya in 2007, lets people send, store and withdraw money with an ordinary mobile phone, using local shops as cash points.

World Bank / Harvard Kennedy School

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The story behind the card

Pesa means money in Swahili. The mobile operator Safaricom and its part-owner Vodafone launched the service in March 2007, after a pilot partly funded by the UK government. A customer hands cash to an agent, often a shopkeeper who sells phone credit, and the money appears as a balance on their phone. They can send it by text message to someone hundreds of kilometres away, who collects it as cash from another agent. By the end of 2011 M-Pesa had about 17 million users in Kenya. A 2016 study in Science by Tavneet Suri and William Jack estimated that access to it had lifted about 194,000 households, 2% of Kenya's total, out of poverty, especially households headed by women.

Türkçe oku
M-Pesa, 2007'de Kenya'da başlayan bir mobil para hizmetidir: Sıradan bir cep telefonuyla para gönderilir ve saklanır, nakit ise mahalle dükkânlarından çekilir.

Pesa, Svahilicede “para” demektir. Hizmeti Mart 2007'de mobil operatör Safaricom ile ortağı Vodafone, kısmen İngiltere hükümetinin desteklediği bir deneme aşamasının ardından başlattı. Müşteri nakit parayı, çoğu zaman kontör satan bir bakkal olan temsilciye verir; para telefonunda bakiye olarak görünür. Bu parayı kısa mesajla yüzlerce kilometre ötedeki birine gönderebilir; alıcı da parayı başka bir temsilciden nakit olarak çeker. 2011 sonunda M-Pesa'nın Kenya'da yaklaşık 17 milyon kullanıcısı vardı. Tavneet Suri ile William Jack'in 2016'da Science dergisinde yayımlanan çalışmasına göre bu hizmete erişim, Kenya'daki hanelerin %2'sini, yani yaklaşık 194.000 haneyi yoksulluktan kurtardı; en çok da kadınların geçindirdiği haneler yararlandı.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: M-Pesa
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