Mobile money is spreading quickly across the globe. The ability to transfer funds from a mobile handset has been hailed as the key to extending financial services to the base of the pyramid.
On the 18th and 19th of October, Erica and I visited Nunguni FSA to officially launch the use of FrontlineSMS + PaymentView. After facing the unavoidable traffic of the Nairobi morning commute, we were on our way east.
Last week, FrontlineSMS:Credit ventured out to the Nyanza Province to meet with three potential PaymentView users: Kisumu Medical and Education Trust (K-MET), ACK Development Services Nyanza (ADS), and the IPA Mumias Information Welfare and Advances (MIWA) Project. K-MET and ADS, both based in Kisumu, have similar challenges.
The expansion of microinsurance has been slow, tethered to distribution channels that allow insurance providers to achieve a feasible scale: microfinance organizations, for example, or retail shops.
Agriculture, by nature, is a dispersed enterprise. We fail to realize this—both here in Nairobi and in the U.S.—when we pop into the grocery store for essentials. All of our products, fruit and vegetables, dairy products, eggs, coffee, have made long and varied journeys to our shelves.
This summer FrontlineSMS:Credit has two Social Impact Summer Fellows, exploring new opportunities for enterprise use of mobile payments to impact the base of the pyramid in agriculture, health, and financial services in East Africa. Sushmita Meka is a Masters of Public Policy student at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
