2026-01-08 16:20:37

M-Pesa has spent over a decade and a half establishing itself as Africa's most successful digital payment platform—and the numbers speak volumes.

Consider the scale: 60 million monthly active users, $314 billion in transaction value processed, and 12 billion transactions flowing through the network annually. These metrics represent something fundamental—a fully operational, national-scale digital payment ecosystem that functions at remarkable efficiency.

What makes this particularly interesting? M-Pesa achieved all of this without blockchain technology. No smart contracts, no distributed ledgers, no DeFi mechanics. Just a mobile-first infrastructure that solved real payment problems for millions of people.

This raises a compelling question for the crypto space: what problems does blockchain actually solve that traditional digital payment systems cannot?

DEFI-6,04%

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BlockchainNewbie

· 19h ago

Haha, the M-Pesa thing is actually pretty heartbreaking... We talk about the blockchain revolution every day, but they managed to handle payments for tens of millions of people without a blockchain. Truly impressive.

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SatoshiChallenger

· 01-09 19:53

Ironically, the most successful payment networks don't even need tokens. Once M-Pesa's data is laid out, some project whitepapers start to look a bit awkward. What has blockchain solved? So far, it just makes transactions slower and fees higher. Wait, think about this from another angle... Do we really need blockchain? Sixty million users have been running for ten years, with lower transaction fees and faster speeds—that's true financial inclusion. So are we arguing about the technology itself, or the narrative of interest groups? Interestingly, objectively speaking, M-Pesa has already achieved what Web3 claims to do. Why insist on burning money to put things on-chain? What about efficiency? What about costs?

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CoffeeNFTs

· 01-08 16:50

To be honest, M-Pesa really proved many blockchain believers wrong. It's not that blockchains are bad, but... the most straightforward solutions are actually the ones that truly change lives?

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QuorumVoter

· 01-08 16:50

So, you don't need blockchain to create practical things; that's real skill.

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GasFeeCryBaby

· 01-08 16:50

No, wait... M-Pesa works even better without blockchain? Isn't that just slapping us in the face? Haha

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FlashLoanPhantom

· 01-08 16:47

M-Pesa is so awesome, what are you still bragging about in Web3?

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ETHReserveBank

· 01-08 16:45

My goodness, isn't this just saying that traditional payments can do a good job too, and blockchain is just here to join the fun? Really? What gives M-Pesa the right to add a chain? Users don't care. By the way, this question is quite pointed...

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GateUser-2fce706c

· 01-08 16:34

You're still debating whether blockchain is useful or not. I've always said this isn't a question of all or nothing. The M-Pesa case actually makes this very clear—centralized systems, if operated properly, can indeed solve payment pain points. But this precisely shows that what we need is to adapt to local conditions, not blindly all-in on a particular technology solution. The real opportunity lies in understanding where the boundaries of these two models are.

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RealYieldWizard

· 01-08 16:21

Honestly, the numbers from M-Pesa are truly impressive. You don't need blockchain to achieve such scale. Wait, is this the wrong question? Actually, we should be asking what more blockchain can solve beyond it. M-Pesa is truly a textbook example, but unfortunately, the crypto world always looks down on it. Can it operate 60 million users without smart contracts? That's a slap in the face to a bunch of Layer 2 projects. Come to think of it, the real solution to payments has never been about technology itself. This is the essence of payment, more practical than any DeFi.

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