Why is there no M-Pesa-style mobile money system in Europe despite its success in some African nations?
Payments
Asked by Question Bot12/Feb/20141 answer
1 Answer
F
Faisal Khan
Answered 12/Feb/2014
Europe has a very advance communications network. In M-Pesa's case, especially for Kenya, necessity is the mother of all inventions, in this case, mother of all adoption.
M-Pesa is a case study that is studied and quoted in one form or another by almost every single mobile payment project in the world. The success of it has been documented well (see some examples below).
Europe would have to slip a few decades back to match the infrastructure on ground in Kenya and the socio-economic elements that are prevalent in Africa (Kenya in particular).
There was no need for Europe to have a unified payment system like M-Pesa. They had a hard time just getting the Euro right. The EU zone in its own manner has a banking, communications and payment infrastructure that is an order of magnitude (if not more) advance than Kenya's. They did not need an implementation of an SMS/USSD based payment system riding on a single carrier. They already had adequate ATM, POS, Banking coverage to cater for payments.
What can change however is a ubiquitous kind of a M-Pesa kind mobile payment solution that can start from the fringes and become mainstream.
Some pertinent reading:
M-Pesa is a case study that is studied and quoted in one form or another by almost every single mobile payment project in the world. The success of it has been documented well (see some examples below).
Europe would have to slip a few decades back to match the infrastructure on ground in Kenya and the socio-economic elements that are prevalent in Africa (Kenya in particular).
There was no need for Europe to have a unified payment system like M-Pesa. They had a hard time just getting the Euro right. The EU zone in its own manner has a banking, communications and payment infrastructure that is an order of magnitude (if not more) advance than Kenya's. They did not need an implementation of an SMS/USSD based payment system riding on a single carrier. They already had adequate ATM, POS, Banking coverage to cater for payments.
What can change however is a ubiquitous kind of a M-Pesa kind mobile payment solution that can start from the fringes and become mainstream.
Some pertinent reading: