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Stanbic Bank and SimbaPay have partnered to offer you a solution that allows you to make international payments via M-Pesa’s Paybill

He is talking about using QR codes (quick response codes), a technology from the 1990s, which is proving to be very useful in the Covid era.Many restaurants have turned to the tech, which allows customers to see a menu, order and pay just by pointing their smartphone at the black, barcode-like squares.

One of the drives for Fintech innovations, like M-Pesa, is financial inclusion, which is mostly geared toward an underbanked or unbanked group of people.

M-Pesa is a virtual banking system that provides transaction services through a SIM card. Once the SIM has been inserted into the card slot of the mobile device, users can make payments and transfer money to vendors and family members with SMS messages. Users with no bank accounts can access the numerous M-Pesa outlets distributed across the country. The money that needs to be stored is given to the kiosk attendant, who transfers the amount in digital form to the user’s M-Pesa’s account. Cash collected from M-Pesa is deposited in bank accounts held by Safaricom. The bank accounts serve as regular checking accounts and are insured up to a maximum of 100,000 shillings (or $1000) by the Deposit Protection Fund. M-Pesa provides receipts as proof of transaction. For a transaction to take place, both parties have to exchange each other’s phone numbers because the phone numbers act as account numbers. After settlement, both parties receive an SMS notification with the full name of the counterparty and the amount of funds deposited or withdrawn from the user’s account. The mobile receipt, which is received within seconds, helps to promote transparency for all individuals involved in a transaction.

It has since expanded to Tanzania, Mozambique, DRC, Lesotho, Ghana, Egypt, Afghanistan and South Africa. Meanwhile services in India, Romania, and Albania have been terminated amid low market uptake. M-Pesa allows users to deposit, withdraw, transfer money, pay for goods and services (Lipa na M-Pesa), access credit and savings, all with a mobile device.

M-Pesa is widely seen as demonstrating that it is possible to make a profit while also improving the lives of the poor.[28] Tavneet Suri, based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and William Jack, based at Georgetown University have produced a series of papers extolling benefits of M-Pesa. In particular, their 2016 article published in "Science" has been very influential in the international development community. The much cited result of the paper was, that 'access to M-PESA increased per capita consumption levels and lifted 194,000 households, or 2% of Kenyan households, out of poverty.[29] Global development institutions focusing on the development potential of financial technology frequently cite M-Pesa as a major success story in this respect, citing the poverty-reduction-claim and including a reference to Suri and Jack’s 2016 signature article. In a report on "Financing for Development", the United Nations write: "The digitalization of finance offers new possibilities for greater financial inclusion and alignment with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and implementation of the Social Development Goals. In Kenya, the expansion of mobile money lifted two per cent of households in the country above the poverty line."[30]