The World of M-Pesa.

As I walked into the Nairobi airport, the sign board read: Welcome to the land of M-Pesa. I had only hear about mobile money, but never experienced it.

Mobile money was pioneered by Vodafone in partnership with Safaricom (local tel company), and their product is now called M-Pesa. I needed to learn about mobile money, as my company worked closely with M-Pesa.

Simply put, mobile money allows your phone to act like your debit card. You can carry money on the phone and send or receive any amounts.

I went to get my local sim and M-pesa account. At the Safaricom store, the lady before me came to top up her m-pesa account. I was shocked when she said: for 50,000shillings! (~35,000Rs.)

Process of getting a sim and m-pesa is very simple: 100shillings and your original passport. No document to sign, no photo, no nothing. In less than 5 minutes i had my sim and m-pesa working. I then asked a lot of dumb questions to the assistant, but finally walked away amazed at the idea of m-pesa.

Now if I get off a taxi, I could ask him for his mobile number and transfer the amount to his m-pesa. I could shop, and pay from my mobile. Almost every food join in town accepts m-pesa. Basically, I could get my way around most parts of kenya with an m-pesa a/c and no cash in my pocket. This is not only a safer option, but also eliminates the hassel of wondering how much to withdraw and carry each time. Here area few mind bogling numbers: there are 17 millions active users of m-pesa in kenya, which is more than a third of their total population. 1/3th of kenya's GDP is transacted on m-pesa!

And the story does not end. In conversation with my colleague Lesley-Ann, who worked at m-pesa before, I asked her: how did someone think of this idea of mobile money? Must have been a complex program to integrate mobile tech with the banking system? Growing adoption and running operations must be a nightmare at m-pesa?

Thats when Lislean casually said, "oh you should ask Nick about how he came up with this idea, he is here next month. Pauline can tell you about operations, as she was head of operations who rolled out m-pesa. And I wrote the program codes at m-pesa." The entire founding team at m-pesa are now my colleagues at M-Kopa Solar.

I have the privilege of working with a management team that does not have a loose dream of changing the world, but a team who have done it once and believe they can do it all over again!

As I continue to remain amazed at mobile money, I paid my taxi guy on m-pesa and got off at a local bar. Had a wonderful evening with colleagues, drinking the local beer and dancing to african music. Unlike bangalore, people start to come in to the bars at 12 and go home at 6am! Excepting the crime scare that people infuse, Nairobi is a city I am starting to like. With 9 more weeks to go, I am looking forward to my time, Nairobi!