Here's a 2015 discussion on the topic, linked to M-Pesa's Wikipedia page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10612723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=106

Here's a 2015 discussion on the topic, linked to M-Pesa's Wikipedia page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10612723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10612723 M-Pesa – a mobile-phone based money transfer and microfinancing service: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa 70 points by melenaboija on Nov 23, 2015 | 37 comments Top comment: mhogomchungu on Nov 23, 2015 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_Ser.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unstructured_Supplementary_Ser.... [3] https://github.com/mhogomchungu/ussd-gui/blob/master/icons/u.. https://github.com/mhogomchungu/ussd-gui/blob/master/icons/u.... [4] https://github.com/mhogomchungu/ussd-gui https://github.com/mhogomchungu/ussd-gui