Cash faces its final call
My latest for The Guardian was this piece about the changing state of money: Cash faces its final call.
I wrote the article back in November but it has only just been used in the paper. That happens sometimes.
The essence is this: M-Pesa is a successful mobile banking application in Kenya. It works via text message on any mobile phone. It's huge over there, but that's because debit cards and cash points aren't as widespread as they are here. But that's not to say that there isn't an opportunity for something similar here, and Beem is a UK company trying to do something similar.
This was one of those articles that's fun to write, mainly because the research was interesting and taught me a few things I didn't know already. I enjoyed interviewing Beem's Kerl Haslam (yes, that is his name) and my Kenyan case study Edward Obiko.
I found Ed by searching Twitter for "m-pesa". He had mentioned it several times and I could tell from his tweets and web posts elsewhere that he was an articulate chap. Just the sort of person you need for an interviewee.
I also made brief contact with Olga Morawczynski, a researcher who has published papers about the social and economic impact of mobile banking in Kenya. She had a great deal to tell me but her work was beyond the scope of the brief I was given by The Guardian. Pity, though: I suspect what she had to say would make a (much longer) story in its own right.
Since interviewing Kerl, I do keep noticing situations where a simple text message payment would be incredibly useful.
The most obvious is paying for school dinners: my son's school charges £2 for a lunchtime meal, which means I often have to send a two pound coin into school with him, inside a named and dated envelope. I've lost count of the number of times he's lost it or forgotten to hand it in. If I could just Beem his payment in from my phone, life would be a lot easier.
Right now Beem is concentrating on students, aiming to make paying for taxis and pizzas a little easier. But keep your eyes out for it elsewhere; I have a feeling this one might catch on.
(Wait, though: that's what we said about Beenz and Flooz and all the others...)
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
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