[sopooneo]

One thing that has always impressed me about these systems: I've never read a story about a corrupt manager of the deposited funds betting them on the stock market and losing them. That's something we in The States have had a hard time preventing and worked hard to legislate against. And still, in a very rough parallel, we utterly failed at it during the housing bubble.

So if my conception of the situation even makes sense, how have M-Pessa and equivalents avoided this pitfall?

[smabie]

They haven’t. I just got my 10gb package stolen by voda today. The company is dishonest and no one around here trusts them. People might get money through M-pesa, but they convert it into cash asap.