There is no doubt that Kenya is currently a very dangerous place for anybody to carry cash around with them. ATMs have helped except that they cannot be found deep in the countryside and then there is the fact that thugs have sometimes forced their victims to hand over their ATM cards and give them their pin numbers and have then gone to ATMs while still holding them hostage and cleaned their accounts.
But now there is a new option that more and more Kenyans are using to carry cash around. It is Safaricom's M-pesa service. This is mostly a money transfer service using the popular and widespread countrywide Safaricom cell phone network. The thing to do if you are on a bus (which can be hijacked and mobile phones stolen) is to take out your sim card from your phone so that even if are robbed, you retain the sim card. As soon as you get to the nearest town you can get to a M-pesa agent and borrow a cell phone to put your sim card inside and draw out cash. Very convenient, more so because M-pesa agents are spread all over the country.
Although what I have just described is a common use of the M-pesa service, it is not the primary one. M-pesa is essentially a money transfer service at rates that nobody else in the market can compete with. You can even send money to somebody who is not a Safaricom subscriber.
But the really exciting thing about this new product that is yet to be exploited by Kenyans is that it can be used as the perfect payment system for an online web-based business. (Get details here on how to launch your own International web based business today)
Here's the full list of things you can do with M-pesa;
# Deposit Money
# Withdraw Money
# Transfer (Send) Money To another M-Pesa customer
# Transfer (send) To someone who is NOT an M-Pesa customer, they don't even need to be a Safaricom subscriber
# Buy Safaricom prepaid airtime.
# M-Pesa is available to everyone, even if you do not have a bank account.
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