M-PESA (mobile money)

Description

Mobile money service launched by Safaricom in 2007 that allows sending, receiving, storing and paying money from a basic phone via an agent network, without a bank account. It grew out of a pilot funded by DFID (Financial Deepening Challenge Fund) and scaled into national financial infrastructure. Suri and Jack 2016 document that it lifted ~194,000 households out of poverty (2% of Kenyan households), with ~185,000 women moving from farming to business.

Linked evidence