M-Pesa and Mobile Banking

We visited a school today that teaches deaf children.  I learned a couple of Kiswahili words in swahili sign language, which is modeled after the Finnish sign language.  We will be working more at this school next month, so I will share more about deaf education in Tanzania later.  I am also learning more about different people's opinions on Tanzanian education, which is very interesting.  I hope to share some of these thoughts as I continue to gather different perspectives. 

Today, I wanted to share a mobile banking solution that was started in Kenya, but is now in Tanzania and Afghanistan and is continuing to grow.  I had heard about this solution, M-Pesa, but did not know what it was called until last night when I ate at Bigg Bites, an Indian restaurant in downtown Arusha.  (There is also a large Indian-Tanzanian population in Arusha, many of whom own restaurants or businesses and are on average more wealthy than a typical Tanzanian).

The owner was telling us how he has expanded his services to include delivery, and while some people are still getting used to the concept of food delivery, the expansion has been very easy so far because so many people can pay using M-Pesa by transferring money from their M-Pesa account to the owner's M-Pesa account.  The delivery person will not give the customer the food until the transfer is confirmed.  According to him, M-Pesa moves more money than banks and it is more convenient for the Tanzanians because they don't have to go through all of the time (apparently it can take up to 3 days for a transfer) and paperwork to receive, transfer, etc. money at a local bank. All they need is a cell phone.  Since credit cards are not popular in Tanzania and cell phones are generally affordable for most families, this is a great service for Tanzanians who can't open a bank account or don't want to spend the time filling out the paperwork in a bank.

Also, can't resist a shout out to IBM, which now operates the M-Pesa initiative for Vodafone, the Tanzanian cell phone company that is affiliated with M-Pesa.

I did some research and wanted to share some informative links:
- Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa
- Interesting article by BBC that outlines additional examples of how M-Pesa is used, primarily in Kenya  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11793290
- An Economist article with more statistics on M-Pesa in Kenya  http://www.economist.com/node/16319635
- Vodafone website with information about M-Pesa http://www.vodacom.co.tz/vodacom-m-pesa
- A white paper by IBM on its involvement with M-Pesa and mobile banking in emerging markets http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/pdf/GBW03122-USEN-02.pdf

Word of the day: simu ya mkononi - cell phone