M-Pesa
M- Pesa is one of the Kenyan mobile company Safaricom developed in cooperation with the communications company Vodafone and early 2007 introduced in Kenya system for handling basic functions of money transfers and private non-cash payments through mobile phones without the need for a regular bank account. It allows the users via designated as M- Pesa Agents dealer the deposit and withdrawal of cash on an electronically -run balance. On this basis, direct non-cash transfers can be performed via an M - Pesa agent from our own M- Pesa M- Pesa funds to other users and transfers of money to people without their own M- Pesa balances by processing.
The term " M- Pesa " is composed of the symbol " M " for mobile and derived from the Swahili word " Pesa " for cash. Since February 2008, a similar service is provided by Vodafone and the cell phone company under the name Roshan M- Paisa in Afghanistan offered since April 2008, M - Pesa in addition, available in Tanzania and since September 2010 in South Africa. Vodafone plans in addition, the introduction in additional countries such as India, Egypt and Ethiopia.
Operation
As agents act at M- Pesa for example, the offices of the company Safaricom, the owners of gas stations and supermarkets or the operators of Internet cafes. In addition to the cashless transfer between M- Pesa Agents and M- Pesa customers as well as between different M- Pesa customers consists of M- Pesa customers the option of a process called airtime prepaid airtime to buy it by a direct transfer can act on other Safaricom customers as a substitute currency. Another common and unforeseen by the provider application is the use of M- Pesa balance as an electronic wallet by deposit and withdrawal of large sums of money for the safe transfer during a trip.
M- Pesa acts so that, increasingly, as an alternative to a regular bank account or a credit card, and other forms of money transfer and cashless payments. Their usefulness is severely limited in Kenya and other countries, particularly in rural areas, due to the small on-site availability of bank branches and ATMs. Also for customers for whom low because of their income, a bank account or a credit card either not available or not economical, , M- Pesa an alternative solution represents the payment for the use takes place per transaction, so there is no cost for the existence of M- Pesa credit arise.
The transactions are settled through the transfer of text messages between clients or between clients and agents. Technically, M- Pesa on the enhancement of the functions of the SIM card of the phone by so-called SIM toolkit enhancements that are specific for M- Pesa customers and for M- Pesa agent. It is thus used without further technical requirements with virtually any mobile phone.
Dissemination
After a period from October 2005 test phase with eight agents and 500 clients who were provided with free phones, the system in Kenya is as a regular service since March 2007. Just a month after launch, 20,000 customers had registered. Approximately one year after the start of M- Pesa in Kenya had 1.6 million users already, representing about one third of all Safaricom customers and nearly five percent of the Kenyan population at this time. In subsequent years, the number of customers rose further in the first half-year report 2011 Safaricom was the number of M- Pesa users with 14.9 million at. This took about 80 percent of mobile customers the service.
In February 2008, Vodafone started along with the cell phone company Roshan with the introduction of a comparable service in Afghanistan, which can for example be used by companies to pay salaries to its employees. As part of the M- Paisa -mentioned project Vodafone and Roshan test beyond the use of some of the functions offered by speech recognition due to the low literacy rate in Afghanistan. Since the end of April 2008 provides the company Vodacom M- Pesa also in Tanzania, since September 2010 Vodafone cooperates with the South African banking group Nedbank in the introduction in South Africa. Vodafone is planning in the near future, the marketing of M- Pesa in other countries such as India, Egypt and Ethiopia.