Lack of banks pushes Africans to cellphone cash

NAIROBI/JOHANNESBURG: To 28-year-old Kenyan Mary Wanjiku, her cellphone is not just a cellphone. It is also a cheap, safe and easy way of sending her mother $40.

But by using it to ping cash to friends and family she and millions of Africans are joining Japan in breaking a technology barrier that remains in Europe and the United States, and paving the way to what could be the cash of the future.

"Before, I would be forced to make the journey home to deliver the money," Wanjiku said outside a Nairobi shop that doubles as an agent for M-PESA, the virtual cash network that means 'mobile money' in Swahili, Kenya's lingua franca. "M-PESA has revolutionized my life."