NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Safaricom’s popular mobile money-transfer service may finally have met its match as innovation in the banking sector catches up.

Deep in sprawling Githurai, a low-income residential estate on the outskirts of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, a cashier sitting in a small cubicle at a cement outlet is busy counting a wad of cash as dozens of customers queue.

A mean-eyed but careful security guard monitors the booth – an agency for Kenya’s second-biggest lender by assets, Equity Bank.

The premises is also an agency for the country’s mobile money-transfer service, M-Pesa. At the booth customers can load money onto their phones to pay bills, buy things or send it to relatives, or convert money received via M-Pesa into cash.