Transactions on Kenya's M-Pesa mobile money service exceed transactions made by Western Union globally

"Local transactions by Kenya’s mobile money service, M-Pesa currently exceed transactions made by Western Union globally, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reports. According to the IMF, “M-Pesa now processes more transactions domestically within Kenya than Western Union does globally, and provides mobile banking facilities to more than 70 per cent of the country’s adult population.”
Launched in March 2007 by Kenyan telecoms operator, Safaricom, the service which now has over 14 million users in Kenya is currently the world’s most successful mobile payments system."

Source:  TheNextWeb, 24th October 2011

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99% of internet access in Kenya is through mobile operators

"Highlights of Q4 2010:
There are 22 million mobile subscribers in Kenya
9.5% mobile subscriptions growth, which is increasing over the previous quarters
6.63 billion minutes of local calls were made on the mobile networks
740 million text messages were sent
Prepaid accounts for 99% of the total mobile subscriptions
The number of internet users was estimated at 8.69 million
The number of internet/data subscriptions is 3.2 million
Broadband subscriptions increased from 18,626 subscribers in the previous quarter to 84,726"
[...]
"A whopping 99% of the internet traffic in Kenya is done via mobile operators, meaning 3G, Edge or GPRS."

Source:  The latest Communications Commission of Kenya report, reported by White African, 18th February 2011

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