Updates on M-Pesa and Why Replicating Successful Models Is No Easy Task

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An earlier blog post on this site explored the rise of mobile payments and specifically looked at M-Pesa, Kenya’s highly successful mobile payment system that has surpassed expectations dramatically and been a huge success.

That post also touched on the problem that most other countries have not been able to replicate the service with anywhere near the same level of success as M-Pesa. The Brookings Institution, an independent non-profit research organization, recently released the above video describing the M-Pesa model in conjunction with a detailed report on the 2012 Brookings Blum Roundtable that can be accessed here.

The report outlines three reasons that came up during the roundtable that might help explain the challenges of replication.

Do You Want To Scale Your Social Startup?

My last article, Are Mobile Payments Feasible Everywhere?, found me diving into the field of mobile technologies and how they’re being used to create better solutions for poverty problems around the world. As part of that, I was looking into a UNICEF platform called RapidSMS, led by Erica Kochi.

Kochi is the UNICEF’s Innovation Unit’s co-lead and is also a frequent lecturer on new product design. In a recent article on TechCrunch, “How Do You Scale Social Innovation Startups”, Kochi describes in detail the difficulty any startup has in creating traction and builds specifically on how social innovators can grow their startups in the best way possible.