Mobile banking; it’s only a pair of bi-syllabic words but today it stands for something that has immeasurable importance.
It feels like another lifetime now when people drove miles just to learn if a given sum has landed in their bank account, or wait a full 30 days just to have a cheque processed.
But, in reality, it wasn’t that long ago when the lone bank branch that was the only one available within a 1000-kilometre radius would be inundated with hundreds of people who just needed to transfer a small sum.
Today, bank branches still see significant foot traffic, but at least people have a much better and more convenient choice now: mobile banking.
Over the years, the global financial system has increasingly adopted mobile banking infrastructure, making it possible for just about anyone to access a full suite of financial services – savings, withdrawals, payments, transfers, loans, insurance, etc. – from just about anywhere provided they have a mobile device (from the most basic feature phones to the most sophisticated tablets).
One country that epitomises the mobile banking revolution more than most and is even often used as a global reference point for illustrating the impact of mobile banking is Kenya.
Today, the ubiquitous M-Pesa mobile money platform, which was only a phone-based peer-to-peer money transfer service in Kenya at the time of its launch in 2007, has grown into what is essentially a full-blown mobile banking platform offering a wide range of financial services to basically all of Kenya.
As things stand, tens of billions of dollars are transacted on the M-Pesa platform every year in billions of transactions, and the service has driven financial inclusion in Kenya to over 80 percent – much more than the global average.
Nowadays, mobile banking is well and truly at home in Kenya and banks have since taken to it, starting from 2010 when Family Bank launched the first bank-led mobile banking platform in Kenya.
These days, mobile banking almost feels like the norm while visiting bank branches seems like a final recourse that is adopted only when absolutely necessary for a lot of people. But mobile banking used to mean something very different in Kenya not too long ago. Indeed, mobile banking in Kenya was quite literally “mobile banking” not that long ago.
In 2004, Co-operative Bank (Co-Op Bank), one of Kenya’s oldest banks, introduced mobile banking in Kenya, an endeavour that was lauded as an “innovative system […]
