Kenya Mobile Payments with George Gachui

Most people in Africa never had a desktop computer. The first computer they owned was a smart phone. This is why Africa is referred to as a “leap frog” place with regard to computers–Africa leapfrogged the desktop to the smart phone.

The banking system in Africa also followed a trajectory that is different than the West. Westerners are used to banking on their desktop computers. African e-commerce has developed around the smartphone as the computer for banking. As a result, Africa is in a technological development phase with tremendous opportunities in the financial sector and beyond.

Mymookh.com is a Kenyan end-to-end payment platform that allows small- to medium-sized businesses to easily set up online stores and sell to consumers directly from their social media pages. It is one of the many startups across Africa leveraging the accessibility of mobile payments to meet the particular needs of merchants and consumers there. Africa’s development and use of mobile payment systems is expected to grow as more countries on the continent create and adopt this technology.

In this episode, George Gachui, co-founder of Mymookh, talks to Carl Mungazi about how Kenya became a leading player in the mobile payment space with its m-pesa system. He explains how it has revolutionized the way Kenyans approach commerce and payment technology and discusses the challenges of creating a unified platform system that transcends borders and currencies.

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Transcript

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