Having written extensively on the telecommunications market trends in Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the Asia Pacific region, Denis Gathanju was recently approached for an interview with CNN to give insight into the revolutionary value added service M-Pesa that is offered by Safaricom, Kenya's leading mobile telecommunications provider.
He authored a feature for the leading US-based telecommunications magazine B/OSS World Magazine in 2007 that profiled the new service by Safaricom that allowed Kenyan mobile subscribers to send and receive money at the touch of a dial as well as to 'bank' cash on their cell phones.
The M-Pesa service has been so successful in Kenya that many other nations and mobile telecommunications providers in India and Nigeria have adopted the business module to change the way people, especially in the developing economies do business.
In Kenya, M-Pesa has been able to provide 'banking' services to millions of Kenyans, many of whom do not have a bank account. Currently, there are less than 4 million Kenyans operating a bank account as compared to the more than 12 million persons connected to the Safaricom mobile service.