What are the things M PESA did right?
- Clean and focused campaign – “Send Money Home” – focused only on national remittances – something that was done in abundance
- Transaction fees were the lowest for any mode of money transfer
- Fees clearly communicated with slabs/displays at agents
- Differential pricing for customers paying to other customers vs non-customers. This brought in viral effects and drove further registrations
- Security was the main plank as money transfer was not all that safe
- Realized that trust resides in timely delivery of SMS receipt. Initial outages or delays created a lot of complaints. mPesa team upgraded the SMSC servers and the menu also
- Low hurdles to join/sign-up. Any ID proof worked and there wasn’t much KYC done
- Availability of agents was high. Uncomporable distribution reach.
- Agents were handpicked, shortlisted after a comprehensive evaluation and then trained sufficiently
- Agent level liquidity/cash management