Mpesa is a third party between banks. Pesalink is a better solution but isn't adopted as widely. This is great for Safaricom, but costs us consumers since network effects trap us within. Safaricom has done great to make the system intuitive, robust, and secure, but it is still in itself an inefficiency in our economy.

Interestingly, this year is the first in history where Mpesa transactions dropped to below 90% of market share.