Mobile Payments

What a Mobile Payment Is

A mobile payment moves money from a balance held against a phone number rather than against a bank account. The phone is the account. For a player without a card or a bank relationship, it can be the only route to an online balance at all, which is why the category exists in markets where card penetration is low.

M-Pesa, and What It Actually Covers

One mobile-payment page is published on this site, and it is the service that defined the category. Vodafone records its origin: Launched on 6 March 2007, originally as an idea part-funded by the UK Department for International Development in partnership with Vodafone.

Its scale is published too: From its beginning in Kenya, M-Pesa has grown to serve more than 51 million customers and 465,000 businesses. And its footprint is named rather than implied: The service is provided by 600,000 agents across Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Ghana and Egypt.

Seven countries, named. That is the useful form of a reach claim, because "available across Africa" would be both vaguer and wrong.

The Agent Network Is How a Reader Reaches It

The agent network is physical, and it is where a reader joins. Safaricom describes registration in those terms: Visit your nearest M-PESA agent outlet or Safaricom retail centre and present a mobile phone with a Safaricom SIM card and valid Identification document. It puts the Kenyan network at There are over 160,000 agents countrywide ready to serve you wherever you are with many more added daily.

The two agent figures measure different things and are not in conflict: 160,000 is Kenya, and the 600,000 above covers all seven countries.

One Method, Not yet a Category

This hub lists a single method, and that is an honest reflection of what has been researched rather than of the market. Other mobile-money services exist in regions this site covers, and each would belong here once there is something specific and sourced to say about using it at a licensed operator.

M-Pesa carries a limited status: the service is substantial and well documented, but whether any given licensed casino accepts it is an operator-by-operator matter and a narrower question than whether M-Pesa exists in a country.

What This Page Does Not Do

It does not state a transaction fee or a transfer limit: both are set by the operator of the mobile-money service and revised regularly, and the current schedule is the only reliable source. It does not claim M-Pesa is accepted by casinos in all seven countries named above — reach of the payment service and acceptance by a gambling operator are different facts. And it does not tell a reader in a market where online casino play is unlawful that mobile money is a way around that; it is not.