New Paper: Mobile Payments Go Viral - M-PESA in Kenya

A new paper is available from the CGAP Microfinance Gateway titled "Mobile Payments go Viral: M-­PESA in Kenya" by Ignacio Mas and Dan Radcliffe of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

From the abstract:

M-PESA’s market success can be interpreted as the interplay of three sets of factors:

• Pre-existing country conditions that made Kenya a conducive environment for a successful mobile money deployment;
• A clever service design that facilitated rapid adoption and early capturing of network effects;
• A business execution strategy that helped M-PESA rapidly reach a critical mass of customers, thereby avoiding the adverse chicken-and-egg (two-sided market) problems that afflict new payment systems.