M-PESA

Kenya is the global hotspot for all things mobile money.  The two chief payment systems, Safaricom M-PESA and Zain Zap, not only share ten million subscribers, but moved ten percent of Kenyan gross domestic product last year.  According to Danson Muchemi, Philip Nyamwaya and Agosta Liko, the respective CEOs of JamboPay, iPay and PesaPal, those figures represent a massive market opportunity.

Danson highlights “very low banking services penetration” as the impetus behind JamboPay, the first online payment gateway in Kenya that processes credit & debit cards.  By topping up an “online purse” via credit/debit card or mobile money, JamboPay enables users to buy online goods from Kenyan merchants without exposing their information.  Unbanked users can access the service by topping up their accounts via mobile money.  Ultimately, JamboPay aims to mitigate the same market failure that gave rise to PayPal in the West: the need for secure and multi-channel access to e-commerce.