[tveita]

They have added nothing of the sort, as far as I can determine. A bitcoin site added M-Pesa as an option for payment. If there is any official affiliation, I'd like to see the proof. No mention of bitcoins or Kipochi appears on http://www.mpesa.in/

You may as well say that 2/3 of Americans have a Paypal account because they have a credit card.

I've seen several articles now that heavily imply that this is an official M-Pesa service, which smells a bit scummy to me, if not outright scammy.

Edit: On their blog they explicitly state: "The Kipochi to M-Pesa service is operated by an independent 3rd party company in Kenya and is not directly affiliated with Safaricom the owners of M-Pesa."

http://kipochi.com/blog

[pelle]

I am the co-founder and CTO of Kipochi.

This is not an official integration with M-Pesa. M-Pesa users don't automatically have a bitcoin wallet either.

There have been a small handful of good journalists covering the story, but way too many try to fit it into their very tiny world view and invent things that sound cool.

Unfortunately these kinds of sensationalist stories can cause us or anyone else working with Bitcoin problems in the future.

[notahacker]

It's the second article I've seen on HN shilling bitcoin as a viable currency for Africans with blatantly false claims. It's a worrying trend.

[WhoIsSatoshi]

I would like to see proof as well, currently this seems to be mostly hearsay and journalist sensationalism.