M-Pesa just launched in Ghana this week. I’m sure other countries will follow. Nevertheless, there is lots of evidence to suggest that it’s not necessarily a silver bullet. While it did work really well in Kenya, Safaricom and Vodafone have had a lot of difficulty replicating it elsewhere.
You could reasonably argue that it has barely been successful outside Kenya. Part of the problem relates to the unique market position they had at the time of launch in Kenya. With more than 60% market share, their policy of keeping it as a walled garden (their economic rationale for launching MPesa at the time was that it was actually a retention tool for customers and so opening it up didn’t make sense to them) didn’t reduce its usefulness.
In other markets where they have more ‘normal’ market shares, this walled garden approach has really impacted their ability to expand. As anyone that has tried to launch a new social network will tell you, network effects, when they’re against you are a bitch to overcome. Having a balance in a MPesa wallet, doesn’t mean much if only 1 in 5 of your friends also have an MPesa wallet and you can’t send it to any of the other 4.
MPesa is a great tool for banking the unbanked and it is definitely the most famous example, but it’s not going to solve the problem elsewhere as successfully as it has in Kenya. It may be part of the solution though and I think it would be great if they could try.