M-PESA solved a very real problem in Kenya and that is moving money in a country where millions of people were outside the formal banking system.
But the mistake is thinking the world stopped there.
Brazil’s Pix processed almost 80 billion transactions in 2025, while India’s UPI was doing more than 23 billion transactions in a single month by May 2026. These systems are evolving around instant settlement, interoperability, QR, Open Finance and increasingly sophisticated digital payments.
That is the part you miss when you only look at Kenya.
M-PESA was revolutionary. It deserves its flowers. But technology keeps moving, and what was groundbreaking 15 years ago isn’t automatically the frontier today.