Tuma na ya Kutoa ; show me any Kenyan who is not familiar with this line and I ’ ll show you a man without an ego . To Kenyans , this is not just a phrase that is now common lingua ; it is in actual fact , the opening line to a revolutionary story titled Transforming Lives . Ladies and Gentlemen , I ’ m talking M-PESA here - a mobile money service launched just over 14 years ago to provide a simple , fast and convenient way to Send Money Home .
Recently , on June 10th 2021 , a new chapter in this revolutionary story was being written ; Safaricom was launching M-PESA Super App with Offline Mode and Mini Apps . But hold up , let ’ s not put the cart before the horse , lucky for us , this revolution has always been televised . So let ’ s recapture the evolution : from Original species to Super App . A good story they say , can take you on a fantastic journey and here ’ s Kenya ’ s favorite corporate story .
In his book Contagious , Jonah Berger trades his lenses on the question “ why do some products , ideas , and behaviors succeed when others fail ?” He gives good examples of Instances where products , ideas , and behaviors diffuse through a population and become what he calls , social epidemics .
While this is true for some , it ’ s pure battle for others . Even with crazy money poured into marketing and advertising : some ideas still bomb , businesses still go under and few products gain traction or become popular with the masses . So what was M-PESA ’ s magic wand ? Was the product simply plain better ? Was the pricing the magic ? Or did the advertising contribute to the success of the product ?
I put my money on clearly meeting a specific consumer need ; that , plus a cocktail of other supporting factors . But even with all the success , this journey too , has had its turbulences .
The Chicken & Egg Dilemma
It ’ s that old riddle that ’ s sparked many arguments through the ages : was it the chicken or the egg that came first ? It ’ s such a tricky question because you need a chicken to lay an egg , but chickens come from eggs . For M-PESA , it was an executional riddle ; and here ’ s how a 2012 McKinsey report captured this dilemma . “ What do you grow first , agent network or customer base ? If Safaricom were to recruit too few agents , customers would find M-PESA difficult to use and difficult to access ... On the other hand , if there were too many agents , many of them would not be able to generate enough business to cover the cost of managing their e-cash and cash liquidity . As a result , they would stop maintaining their electronic money float and cash balances .”
One of the keys to M-PESA ’ s initial success was its decision to match network growth to customer base growth , ensuring a steady 1,000 transactions per agent per month . And Bam ! From getting this balance just right , the journey of transforming lives set-off in earnest .
What started as a phone-based peer to peer money transfer service with only 19,671 mobile active M-PESA users recorded in its first month of operation grew to 1,041,522 mobile active M-PESA users by 1st November 2007 and a whopping 19.5 million just five years after launch .
Get this , according to one 2012 government report ; the 19.5 million mobile money users represented 83 % of Kenya ’ s adult population , transferring US $ 8 billion per year ( 24 % of Kenya ’ s GDP ). Let ’ s take a minute of silence and process that .
The DNA
With M-PESA , it ’ s not literally possible to capture all those significant phases of growth . So I ’ ll stay bound by duty ; filter out the significant and stick to the transformational-because that ’ s M-PESA ’ s DNA . Today , M-PESA has not only transformed the everyday lives of most Kenyans , it has disrupted the traditional banking system , captured the previously unbanked market , deepened financial inclusion and quite frankly , built the only elaborate ecosystem enabling businesses to be run from a mobile phone .
According to the International Monetary Fund ’ s October 2011 regional economic outlook for sub-Saharan Africa , “ M-Pesa now processes more transactions domestically within Kenya than Western Union does globally and provides mobilebanking facilities to more than 70 percent of the country ’ s adult population .” So the question begs , what made M-PESA so contagious ?
While responding to the question “ What are the most critical issues when launching a mobile-money deployment ?” the then
CEO Michael Joseph said , “ The most important issue in the launch phase is getting your main message right . First , you have to have the right thing you ’ re trying to say , the right product to offer people . It can ’ t be a generic product that tries to be all things to all people all the time . You have to understand : what is the particular need in the country where you are ?”
Basically what MJ was saying was that you must start with the consumer ; understand his needs , develop specific solutions and see how best to reach out to them .
In its entire evolutionary story , M-PESA replicates this DNA with biological precision . It ’ s passion for customer centricity , simple strategic communications and the ultimate drive of transforming lives by solving specific customer needs remains their unchanged template of genetic instructions used for the functioning , growth and production of all known M-PESA developments . To them , some things will never change !
Changes
But “ as long as you change , you change for the better , I aint mad at cha ” Those words of the legend Tupac Shakur seemed to have inspired this chapter of the M-PESA story . So , whereas the core , the why and the purpose remained unchanged , in October 2010 , the face of leadership changed : out went Michael Joseph and in came Bob Collymore . After a successful nurturing through birth , infancy and early childhood , this evolving baby was in the hands of a new caregiver .
Under Collymore , M-PESA evolved from a basic SIM card-based money transfer application into a fully-fledged financial service . It partnered with banks to offer loans and savings as well as merchant payments services through the use of Lipa Na M-PESA .
According to January 2019 data from the Central Bank of Kenya ( CBK ), Kenyans transacted nearly half the country ’ s GDP via mobile money platforms . It was literally during this phase that M-PESA grew from the simple idea of ; “ Send Money Home ” to a banking tool for millions of Kenyans across the 47 counties and got to its tipping point .
Malcolm Gladwell , in his book ‘ The Tipping Point : How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference ’, describes the tipping point as that magic moment
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