I didn't get that impression. The company I work for sells services in the area of mobile payments, and M-Pesa really is the "holy grail" that many companies worldwide are trying to imitate. I visited Kenya in April, and it is everywhere. In the middle of nowhere along the roadsides you see little green shacks with the M-Pesa logo where you can collect money that has been sent to you. However, M-Pesa is not without its downsides. Safaricom is stagnant on adding features, and getting a "pay bill" number for your business so that you can accept payments from customers is a lengthy and somewhat complicated process. On the other hand, this opens new doors for entrepreneurs to fill in the gaps.
I don't think the argument was that M-Pesa isn't something real and substantive, it's that the article was a poorly done puff piece. Honestly, I got as much from your one paragraph write up about M-Pesa as I did from the original article.
