text: Vodafone, along with its Kenyan subsidiary, Safaricom, developed m-pesa, a mobile payment and value storage system to be used on its phones. Transactions are capped at about $500, but crucially can be person-to-person, acting as digitized cash. Introduced in 2007, it had 9 million users 40 percent of Kenya's population just two years later. By 2013, 17 million Kenyans were using it, with transactions valued at over $24 billion over half of Kenya's GDP.