Before M-Pesa was M-Pesa, it was a pilot in Thika with a handful of women's groups and a piece of code written to disburse microfinance loans. Catherine Karimi Gichunge was pulled out of the Safaricom call centre in 2005 to sit next to Vodafone's project manager, and she has never told this part of the story on the show before. There was no API: electronic value was created by carrying cash to a single bank branch and uploading a CSV file. The first big agent was a chain of petrol stations. Launch day meant sacks of pens and T-shirts in Nakuru, ten minutes per customer. Catherine, now CEO of Redant International, explains why this groundwork is the reason M-Pesa succeeded where Airtel Money and M-Pesa South Africa failed, and why Kenya still has no alternative. Listen and share with anyone building payments in Africa.

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