We’re big fans of mobile payments system M-Pesa, and believe it holds great promise for the largely unbanked population in Egypt. Tim Harford presented M-Pesa as one of the 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy, his BBC-produced radio show. Harford tracks how M-Pesa started in Kenya, where Kenyans used it to “reinvent money itself,” and moves on to tell the story of how the Afghan government uncovered a widescale corruption scandal of some officials who were skimming about 30% of the cash allocated to police salaries, all after it switched to a mobile payment system to pay police officers — who realised they were getting paid less than what they were due all along. The idea behind M-Pesa, which took off in Kenya, “was to make it easier for small businesses to repay micro-finance loans. But, almost immediately, M-Pesa exploded into something far bigger - there are now 100 times more M-Pesa kiosks than ATMs in Kenya – and with far-reaching consequences, in many developing economies. Money transferred this way is easy to trace, which is bad news for the corrupt. And good news for tax authorities.” (runtime 12:16).

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