4 ms·

Tanzanian here. I think calling the service "M-Pesa" is misleading since a lot of other people are offering the same service. Here in Tanzania, "M-Pesa" is t

Tanzanian here. I think calling the service "M-Pesa" is misleading since a lot of other people are offering the same service. Here in Tanzania, "M-Pesa" is the name for the service offered by vodafone,a mobile communications company. "Tigo Pesa" is the name for the same service offered by tigo,a mobile communication company. "Airtel money" is the name for the same service offered by airtel,a mobile communication company. "EzyPesa" is the name for the same service offered by zantel,a mobile communication company. For the above reasons,i generally call the service offered by these companies as "a banking service managed by mobile phone companies". "Sim banking" is the name of the service offered by a "traditional" bank called crdb[1] so a more generalized name that accommodates both traditional banks and cellular network operator banks is in need. Most traditional banks are also offering the same service. The only thing they all have in common from the user's perspective is that the services are offered through ussd codes[1] meaning they are not tied to mobile phones and they work with any device that supports ussd codes. I have an application called ussd-gui[4][3] that i use to manage by money at vodafone "bank" using a mobile broadband modem on my linux system. [1] http://crdbbank.com/tz/alternative-banking/simbanking.html http://crdbbank.com/tz/alternative-banking/simbanking.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unstructured_Supplementary_Service_Data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unstructured_Supplementary_Ser... [3] https://github.com/mhogomchungu/ussd-gui/blob/master/icons/ussd-gui.jpeg https://github.com/mhogomchungu/ussd-gui/blob/master/icons/u... [4] https://github.com/mhogomchungu/ussd-gui https://github.com/mhogomchungu/ussd-gui

ganwar 11y ago
So these companies act as a kind of payment bank in this capacity.
- mhogomchungu 11y ago
  They act like traditional banks in a sense that you can have them hold your money for you and some give out interest rates!!!. Their biggest difference with a traditional bank is that their "bank" accounts are tied to phone numbers. Once they have your money,you can do money transactions more or less the same way you do with a debit/credit card. You can also have your "bank" accounts on these companies tied to a "bank" account from a traditional bank and you can move your money back and forth between them.
okal 11y ago
I think the wiki is specific to M-Pesa, not mobile money transfer services in general. Not sure what about it you consider misleading. I wonder why they didn't standardize on a single interface. We had trouble integrating with Kenyan providers at a device level at my previous job, since they exclusively use SIM toolkit apps, and - at the time - didn't provide APIs. USSD would have been a godsend. Great work on USSD-GUI.

ganwar 11y ago

So these companies act as a kind of payment bank in this capacity.

mhogomchungu 11y ago
They act like traditional banks in a sense that you can have them hold your money for you and some give out interest rates!!!. Their biggest difference with a traditional bank is that their "bank" accounts are tied to phone numbers. Once they have your money,you can do money transactions more or less the same way you do with a debit/credit card. You can also have your "bank" accounts on these companies tied to a "bank" account from a traditional bank and you can move your money back and forth between them.

okal 11y ago

I think the wiki is specific to M-Pesa, not mobile money transfer services in general. Not sure what about it you consider misleading. I wonder why they didn't standardize on a single interface. We had trouble integrating with Kenyan providers at a device level at my previous job, since they exclusively use SIM toolkit apps, and - at the time - didn't provide APIs. USSD would have been a godsend. Great work on USSD-GUI.