Mobile payments in Kenya and other African countries is on the rise. Thus, millions of people get access to cashless payment transactions. This also helps the economic development.
The Boy has brought a mobile phone in the small Shop, where to buy phone cards, jewelry and candy. According to the Goods there is to buy at the Store, not the mind. Instead, he taps something into his phone and sends a message. Addressee of the shop owner, standing behind the barred counter and waits.
She casts a critical glance at your phone when the SMS is received. Then she counts 550 Kenyan shilling (five Euro) and stretches it to him. The Boy grins briefly, grabs the Tickets and runs out of the Store.
Debora Kumeschi have to laugh. “I’m here, a bit like a Bank,” says the Kenyan, from Kilimambogo, about one and a half hours drive from the capital Nairobi. On the green-painted metal doors and window shutters of their Shops are the five letters: M-Pesa catch the eye. This is the Name of the largest mobile money service in Africa – twelve years ago, from Kenya’s mobile operator Safaricom launched. With M-Pesa, Kenyans can transfer, pay bills, on the Internet shopping; or just to withdraw money.
The Shop of Debora Kumeschi from Kilimambogo
30 million Kenyans use the service and you may not need more than a simple phone, a phone number and a SIM card. In a country where credit cards are only something for the Rich, is M-Pesa, for many the first access to the cashless monetary transactions.
Invoice by text message
Also for street trader Patrick Macharia: He sells at his Stand in Nairobi, okra, legumes, and much more. His supplier’s truck drive up. After you gave him the goods in the Hand, whips out her mobile phone and taps on the keys. The dealer looks it over and nods. A little later his phone buzzes. The delivery note and invoice are received. He also will pay with M-Pesa. “In the past, I had to go to the goods shop,” he says. “Now I order the day before and will delivered on time.” This is for Nairobi’s street traders something totally New.
Patrick Macharia receives telephone his account via mobile
“Just what the informal sector with the thousands of street vendors, and kitchens subject: There is no one to you just-in-time and with reliable quality supplies,” says Peter Njonjo. It is supplied-in-chief of the trading company Twiga Foods, the Macharia and 2500 other retailers and restaurateurs in Kenya’s capital every day.
Twiga buys 17,000 producers in the surrounding areas. “At the beginning of the business, the farmers supply only against Cash. Today we wrap up 40 percent without cash via mobile phone.” The Twiga-employees enter the harvest with the tablet and send the data to the company headquarters, which can kidney at an early stage of the product MRP.
High Interest Rates
The concept should be extended to other cities and countries in East and West Africa. A number of donors stands in the Background ready for it, such as the German investment and development company (DEG), a subsidiary of German state-owned KfW Bank. Njonjo sees the agricultural trade in Africa, thanks to the IT and the cashless payment system at a turning point.
Twiga-In-Chief Peter Njonjo
So that the Vision can become a reality, you must Twiga help when it comes to mobile money. For loans, for the flexible processing of business transactions, M-Pesa only to high rates of interest of two percent per day.
The dealer therefore developed – with the support of the world Bank – a private mobile payment system that would allow customers and suppliers in the future, loans at comparatively cheap seven to eight per cent in the year.
Mobile money against poverty
According to a report by the world Bank, the mobile money has brought in Kenya, 200,000 people out of poverty. According to the Institution, 72 percent of all Kenyans had in 2017, a mobile account. The is top in Africa and more than in Germany (61Prozent) and France (49 percent). Also in the neighbouring countries of Uganda (47 percent), Tanzania (37 percent), and Rwanda (29 percent), the rate is relatively high. In Ethiopia, there are only 0.3 per cent.
Thierry Artaud, founder and CEO of M-Birr
The want to change Thierry Artaud. He is Chairman of the Board of the Irish financial technology company Moss, which launched four years ago, the first mobile payment service in the country, M-Birr,. “The mentality is still very much focused on cash,” he says at the registered office of the company in Addis Ababa. So even the wages to be paid out in four of five cases at bar. At the same time the country with an average income of 715 Euro per capita one of the poorest in the world. One has to do with the other.
Waiting for the reward
Artaud says: “It is often the case that workers are ordered to receive your salary for a certain time to a certain place. There, it can be hot then but the truck comes tomorrow. Some have travelled hours by foot from their place of residence. For you it’s not worth it to return home. So they wait – sometimes for days.”
The result is that dealers offer you on-site to the expected wage loans with excessive interest rates, so that you can eat, and can sleep drink. In the end, only a fraction remains from the salary to spare. But if the people do not get a portion of your income even first home, exacerbating the poverty problem.
There is no Top must be a Smartphone with An old Nokia Phone will do.
For the economic development of the access to financial services would be a step forward. Is predestined: the mobile radio network. Because while banks in the country are a rarity, a mobile radio with a nationwide coverage of 95 percent are available.
Where banks are remote, agent Demera Kumeschi in Kenya the Job: travel agents, food retailers, hairdressers. In order to integrate those in a cashless economy, which can afford a mobile phone, M-Birr, personalized PIN cards. Transactions are then carried out with the mobile phone of an agent.
For the Blind, the company has developed a wristband that contains an NFC Chip, as it is also found in credit cards with contactless payment function. This is to ensure that the grants will actually go and complete the needy.