Safaricom has launched its mobile Mvisa app in Kenya, challenging the world's largest mobile money platform, M-Pesa, in its home country. One potential advantage is that with Mvisa, consumers and merchants do not need to be customers of the same bank or mobile operator, which could increase interoperability, whereas M-Pesa users must subscribe to its owner, Kenyan telecom, Visa. However, unlike M-Pesa, Mvisa users have to be connected to one of four Kenyan partner banks. Kenya has the world's highest mobile money penetration rate with more than half of the adult population, 16.6m, using M-Pesa which handled transactions worth more than $50bn last year.
Visa has launched its mobile Mvisa app in Kenya, challenging the world's largest mobile money platform, M-Pesa, in its home country. One potential advantage is that with Mvisa, consumers and merchants do not need to be customers of the same bank or mobile operator, which could increase interoperability, whereas M-Pesa users must subscribe to its owner, Kenyan telecom, Safaricom. However, unlike M-Pesa, Mvisa users have to be connected to one of four Kenyan partner banks. Kenya has the world's highest mobile money penetration rate with more than half of the adult population, 16.6m, using M-Pesa which handled transactions worth more than $50bn last year.