M PESA story

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