gmeltdown

This christmas did not pass without much drama for many Kenyans. Banks had for some days before the holidays sent what looked like panic notifications advising customers to change their ATM card PIN numbers. Although I don't recall being a targeted recipient of the " Change your PIN " plea by my bank, good old twitter amplified the message at some point on 23rd and 24th December. Bank with StanChart? Change your PIN tonight. Not later. Not tomorrow. Your money is only safe under your pilllow for now. — Jackson Biko (@bikozulu) December 23, 2012 As fate would have it, having been unable to scamper for the seemingly account-saving change of PIN, Christmas eve would be the day fraudsters would hit my account. In the resulting helplessness of things, where else to go but good old twitter to share the experience with the rest of the world? Just got my Stanchart ATM PIN stolen/changed and cash withdrawn. People CHANGE your PIN numbers!! — John Kieti (@gmeltdown) De...

Mobile Money in Kenya, and East Africa in general has become part and parcel of everyday activities. Often times users of M-Pesa in Kenya are seen complaining about how their mobile money payments (or transfers) did not go through in good time to much their hurry. Sometimes users complain about a complete failure of their attempted transactions. One would think then, "if M-PESA is that unreliable, why not Use alternative mobile money transfer platforms?" The reality is that the alternatives - the likes of Airtel Money, Yucash, Orange Money and Mobikash may not always be better. For instance, the alternatives might imply one driving for a long while looking for an agent to deposit money for the transaction as their agent networks are largely under-developed. Critical minutes of need At a critical moment this evening, I run out of power in my house (still learning to match KPLC pre-payments and usage). So having got used to the convenience of recharging the pre-paid meter acc...

Two week old context On the Saturday of December 4th 2010, I fought my way out of bed to make it on time for Mindspeak with Robert (Bob) William Collymore. Bob has been Safaricom’s Chief Executive Officer from October 2010 and many Kenyans were curious to hear ‘anything’ from him at the increasingly popular event.  Mindspeak is an event organized monthly on Saturday mornings by Mr. Aly Khan Satchu  (Chief Executive Officer of Rich.co.ke). The venue for the event is  usually at the Nu Metro cinema, Westgate Mall in Nairobi’s Westlands area. The MindSpeak happened only two months after another insightful event I wrote about on ‘ Reflections with Michael Joseph of Safaricom’ at the iHub Nairobi. A number of bloggers including James Murua , Tovuti Sanifu and UjenziBora have chronicled their observations at the MindSpeak event with Bob Collymore. A lot of the attendants were also tweeting the event live and their live feed was captured by afrinnovator using CoveritLive....

Emerging battle fronts for Safaricom, Orange, Yu  and Airtel Kenya It has been correctly observed that for the Kenyan Mobile Network Operator (MNO) the voice market is only a cash cow in a wide array of business ventures and revenue streams.  Last week I wrote about the epic battle between Safaricom and Airtel in the voice and Short Message Service (SMS) market. I shall call these engagements battles as they appear to be quite a number along a couple of frontiers that our MNOs will need to fight it out over time. This is all in the bigger, long term war among the operators for favor with Kenyan consumers. In this post, I shall share some quick, simple thoughts on the various market frontiers The mobile money frontier Safaricom’s M-PESA service in Kenya has in the past two years become a globally acclaimed success . It has revolutionised lives in Kenya. The country has also become an attractive market for products building on innovations around mobile money. All the othe...

M-PESA is the mobile money transfer platform introduced in Kenya by Safaricom - Kenya's arguably dominant mobile network operator. It is a fact that M-PESA has revolutionized lifestyles of Kenyans in the last three years. To-date there are about 20,000 M-PESA agents in Kenya according to statistics from Safaricom. It is the extensive network of M-PESA outlets that Michael Joseph - former CEO of Safaricom attributes to the phenomenal success of the M-PESA money transfer system (see my notes on ‘ reflections with MJ ’ in October 2010). Although the former CEO's assertion remains arguable, the significance of the agents and their outlets cannot be overstated in analyzing the money transfer system's success. Recently I engaged a couple of M-PESA agents in some discourse to try and understand their contribution to the platform's success. Perhaps it is because of our age old tendency to complain over everything that I caught a few concerns that would qualify to be the ...