M-Pesa (“pesa” means money in Swahili) was launched in Kenya in March 2007 by the mobile operator Safaricom. It turned an ordinary mobile phone into a way to store and send money, without a bank account.
Customers register with a local agent, often a small shop, and exchange cash for electronic money. They can then send it to family or friends, pay bills or buy airtime. Each transfer is protected by a PIN and confirmed by text message, and the recipient collects cash from another agent.
By December 2016 the service had almost 29.5 million active customers and was running in 10 countries. It is widely studied as an African innovation that reached people the banking system had left out.