
Kipochi, a Bitcoin wallet service, now supports M-Pesa - danpal
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/one-third-of-kenyans-now-have-a-bitcoin-wallet
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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...](http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-
economics/21579870-east-african-governments-are-targeting-telecoms-firms-
charging-mobile)

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.

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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](http://www.ifad.org/remittances/maps/africa.htm)

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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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pelle
I'm the CTO of Kipochi who is rolling out this service in Africa.

First of all this article greatly exaggerates things.

Anyone with a mobile data enabled phone theoretically has a bitcoin wallet
using our service. We are rolling out feature phone specific services as well,
but roll out is limited by operators.

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txttran
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.

~~~
tveita
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/](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](http://kipochi.com/blog)

~~~
pelle
I am the co-founder and CTO of Kipochi.

This is not an official integration with M-Pesa. M-Pesa users don't
automatically have a bitcoin wallet either.

There have been a small handful of good journalists covering the story, but
way too many try to fit it into their very tiny world view and invent things
that sound cool.

Unfortunately these kinds of sensationalist stories can cause us or anyone
else working with Bitcoin problems in the future.

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uuilly
I just got back from Kenya 2 days ago. I was blown away at the M-Pesa
penetration. They are skipping credit cards just as they skipped land lines.

~~~
mtgx
Don't you like that part about technology/disruption? Normally, it would need
to trickle down, which means some countries would always be decades behind
others when it comes to a certain type of infrastructure or technology.

But thanks to disruption, not only can some countries completely skip one or
two types of technology at once, and jump straight to the latest one, but
sometimes they can actually get _ahead_ of the "developed" countries,
especially if those countries are too "entrenched" with a certain technology,
and it resists moving on to the new disruptive one (so basically the same
rules of disruptions that apply to companies, apply to countries, too).

If Bitcoin keeps going to achieve its true potential, I could see how the
first country to declare Bitcoin as its national currency, wouldn't be a
"developed country", but an African country or something.

~~~
cinquemb
Seems like that also falls in line with some of the points made by Thiel in
his debate with Andreessen [0]

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yztBoNQRYo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yztBoNQRYo)

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dobbsbob
Mpesa can be loaded with online banking which means fraud potential if you can
convert it to BTC. Converting BTC to Mpesa is no problem because they are
guaranteed funds, so money remittance is a real possibility but yeah no
evidence this is happening

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brianbreslin
Very excited about this. I'm friends with one of the cofounders. Think
remittances as a huge market for this. Also look at companies like Xoom that
this takes on. or western union.

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languagehacker
Can't be any worse than the Zimbabwean Dollar

