SAFARICOM - THE DEPARTMENT THAT BANKED A COUNTRY.
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On the sixth of March, 2007, in a small office in Nairobi, a Kenyan telecoms company launched a product that nobody else in the world thought would work.
It was called M-Pesa. It let you send money — actual money — by SMS. The banking regulator did not know what to call it. The telecoms regulator did not know who should regulate it. Vodafone, which co-owned the company, had tried versions of the same idea in other markets and watched them fail.
