In this episode, Samora Kariuki sits down with Catherine Karimi Gichunge, a member of the original M-Pesa team, for a deep dive into the untold story of how Africa's most iconic fintech was really built.

The M-Pesa story is often told like a myth, a brilliant innovation that grew "organically" into a billion-dollar behemoth. But this narrative skips the most important part: the messy, unglamorous, and deliberate work that made it all possible.

This conversation begins with a surprising revelation: M-Pesa was never intended to be a "send money home" service. It was born from a pilot project to solve a specific problem for a microfinance institutions: the risk and inefficiency of disbursingcash loans. It was only by observing how a small group of women in the pilot started using the system; storing value on their SIM cards and sending money to each other that the team discovered the product's true, world-changing potential.

This is a masterclass in building something real, one user and one agent at a time, covering the four-year pilot before the 2007 launch , the reality of walking kilometers with a laptop to set up a single agent , and the complex financial architecture that makes the magic work behind the scenes.

●  The true origin story of M-Pesa asa microfinance loan disbursement tool, not a P2P payment service.

●     How the "Send Money Home" phenomenon was discovered by observing unexpected user behavior during the pilot phase.

●     The on-the-ground reality: launching with only 35 inactive agents and using guerrilla marketing tactics to drive initial adoption.

●     The secret financial architecturethat makes M-Pesa work: understanding the critical roles of the control account, working capital, float, and commission accounts.

●     How real-world problems led to innovation, like the creation of the aggregator and super agent models to solvecommission payment and liquidity challenges.

●     An expert take on why Kenya becamea mobile money market while Nigeria became a bank-led payments market."I had to walk from Muranga Road to Haile Selassie on foot, set up another agent. People do not know these things. They say it is organic growth. It is not."

Key Quote:

"I had to walk from Muranga Road to Haile Selassie on foot, set up another agent. People do not know these things.They say it is organic growth. It is not."

Key Quote: