How M-PESA Is Leading a Financial Revolution Across Africa

I attended and spoke at the European Blockchain Convention this week in Barcelona, where the energy around digital assets, Bitcoin and Web3 was palpable. Among the 6,000 attendees, there was a sense that we’re on the brink of a new era in finance and digital infrastructure

One conversation that particularly struck me came from an unexpected source—my taxi driver, who hailed from East Africa. He was talking about M-PESA, a mobile payment system that’s revolutionized financial services across his home region. While Venmo and Zelle are household names here in the U.S., M-PESA has been quietly leading a financial revolution across Africa for over a decade.

M-PESA, which stands for “mobile money” in Swahili, launched in Kenya in 2007 by the mobile network operator Safaricom, targeting the unbanked. A survey just a year earlier found that under 20% of Kenyan adults had a bank account, whereas over half either owned or had access to a cellphone.

Today, M-PESA boasts more than 66 million users, including my taxi driver, and processes 33 billion transactions annually. And its success is no longer confined to Kenya. It’s expanded to countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ghana and, most recently, Ethiopia, a country often referred to as the “last frontier” for digital banking.

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