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South Africa’s Vodacom to launch M-PESA mobile money service in South Africa

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By: , IntoMobile
Sunday, April 4th, 2010 at 4:41 AM

South Africa’s Vodacom is teaming up with local banking group Nedbank to launch the mobile money service – M-PESA. The service, which was originally created as a pilot funded jointly by Vodafone and the UK Department for International Development [DFID] Financial Deepening Challenge Fund, has proved immensely successful in Kenya, Tanzania and Afghanistan, and has managed to attract more than 10 million customers to date.

Vodacom is obviously happy to introduce the service, hoping to repeat the success in South Africa. The company’s Managing Director, Shameel Joosub, said that he’s confident M-PESA is going to change the lives of “unbanked” South Africans. “M-PESA has a successful track record in other markets. With the backing of Nedbank and Vodafone, as well as the power of the public’s trust in the Vodacom brand, all of the signs are there that M-PESA is going to revolutionize the way South Africans transfer, share and spend their money,” he added.

Personally I’m a big fan of mobile money services and can’t wait to see them being adopted on a wider scale, all around the world…

[Via: CellularNews]

About The Author

Dusan Belic

Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do. In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application. Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis.

  • Gerald @ Kenya Business Directory

    M-PESA mean Mobile-Money in the local slang in Kenya. It has really been successful in Kenya and lets hope it does the same in other countries.