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Kipochi, a Bitcoin wallet service, now supports M-Pesa

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Re: Kipochi, a Bitcoin wallet service, now supports M-Pesa

#3

Post by tveita »

txttran wrote: post #2

1/3 of Kenyans use M-Pesa, a mobile money transferring platform. M-Pesa recently added support for bitcoin. So while 1/3 of Kenyans have a bitcoin wallet, most of them may not even be aware of this fact.

They have added nothing of the sort, as far as I can determine. A bitcoin site added M-Pesa as an option for payment. If there is any official affiliation, I'd like to see the proof. No mention of bitcoins or Kipochi appears on http://www.mpesa.in/

You may as well say that 2/3 of Americans have a Paypal account because they have a credit card.

I've seen several articles now that heavily imply that this is an official M-Pesa service, which smells a bit scummy to me, if not outright scammy.

Edit: On their blog they explicitly state: "The Kipochi to M-Pesa service is operated by an independent 3rd party company in Kenya and is not directly affiliated with Safaricom the owners of M-Pesa."

http://kipochi.com/blog

Re: Kipochi, a Bitcoin wallet service, now supports M-Pesa

#4

Post by jareau »

This could be a huge disrupter to the ~$40B African remittance market. "In all of Western Africa...70 per cent of payments are handled by one money transfer operator [1]." I have a hard time believing that stat will hold with the M-pesa network linked up to the Bitcoin network.

[1] http://www.ifad.org/remittances/maps/africa.htm

Re: Kipochi, a Bitcoin wallet service, now supports M-Pesa

#5

Post by WhoIsSatoshi »

tveita wrote: post #3
txttran wrote: post #2

1/3 of Kenyans use M-Pesa, a mobile money transferring platform. M-Pesa recently added support for bitcoin. So while 1/3 of Kenyans have a bitcoin wallet, most of them may not even be aware of this fact.

They have added nothing of the sort, as far as I can determine. A bitcoin site added M-Pesa as an option for payment. If there is any official affiliation, I'd like to see the proof. No mention of bitcoins or Kipochi appears on http://www.mpesa.in/ You may as well say that 2/3 of Americans have a Paypal account because they have a credit card. I've seen several articles now that heavily imply that this is an official…

I would like to see proof as well, currently this seems to be mostly hearsay and journalist sensationalism.

Re: Kipochi, a Bitcoin wallet service, now supports M-Pesa

#6

Post by notahacker »

tveita wrote: post #3
txttran wrote: post #2

1/3 of Kenyans use M-Pesa, a mobile money transferring platform. M-Pesa recently added support for bitcoin. So while 1/3 of Kenyans have a bitcoin wallet, most of them may not even be aware of this fact.

They have added nothing of the sort, as far as I can determine. A bitcoin site added M-Pesa as an option for payment. If there is any official affiliation, I'd like to see the proof. No mention of bitcoins or Kipochi appears on http://www.mpesa.in/ You may as well say that 2/3 of Americans have a Paypal account because they have a credit card. I've seen several articles now that heavily imply that this is an official…

It's the second article I've seen on HN shilling bitcoin as a viable currency for Africans with blatantly false claims. It's a worrying trend.

Re: Kipochi, a Bitcoin wallet service, now supports M-Pesa

#8

Post by jdmitch »

Firstly, saying one third of kenyans use M-Pesa doesn't really reflect its impact fully - from the Economist's article on mobile money in East Africa last week:

"17m of Kenya’s 19m adults are signed up to M-PESA. Cash equivalent to nearly one-third of Kenya’s GDP washes through the service."

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21579870...

Ultimately, the move toward less regulated currency is driven by the Kenyan Government's decision to tax M-Pesa transactions by 10% which threatens to tip them towards no longer being the most efficient way to move money. This is just a clever work-around to the poor regulation of mobile money.

Re: Kipochi, a Bitcoin wallet service, now supports M-Pesa

#10

Post by mtgx »

I've been hoping since early days of Bitcoin that it will eventually get used in some countries in Africa, where inflation can be rampant, and something like Bitcoin could actually offer "stability".

The only problem was that you need at least a smartphone to make it work - and electricity to keep charging those smartphones. But I think some of the countries are getting there and are starting to meet the prerequisites.

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