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A comment on Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment. Parent comment

Re:Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to ... by AdamN on Wednesday May 20, 2026 @10:14AM (#48208202)
That's still a man in the middle coordinating the payments (mpesa, etc...) and essentially holding both sides of the transaction. When you send money to somebody with mobile money you're sending it to the mobile network operator who then let's the other person know so they can move the money to somebody else (or cashout or leave it there).

It's not really a federated system because you can't for instance send money from mpesa in kenya to a different provider in uganda.

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Re:Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to ... by madradavid on Wednesday May 20, 2026 @10:24AM (#48208378)
Actually you can send money (cross border payments ) to another country that also has mobile money, I can send money to a Kenyan, Tanzanian etc all I need is their Phone number. I am not sure what you mean by “holding both sides of the transaction “, when you send me money it appears in my balance (which I can check via a USSD query), it’s essentially a bank account but on USSD and sms. A lot of cross border payments are now settled via USSD. Hell I can now get a Visa/Mastercard by just dailing a code and I will have payment details with my name and address.
[ Parent | on HN ]