[kictanet] USA catches up with Kenya, implements MPESA like solution

[Alex Comninos]

this solution however, is still reliant on internet it seems. From
Wired magazine:

Pay Anyone With Cash — Even When They’re Miles Away
http://www.wired.com/business/2013/01/paynearme-remote-cash-payments/

"Square changed the game for small businesses by letting anyone easily
take credit cards. Now PayNearMe founder and CEO Danny Shader says
he’s doing the same for cash. Wait, what?

The whole point of cash is that it’s the raw unit of legal tender.
There’s no mediating, no processing. Cash would seem the form of
payment least in need of technological intervention. Cash in hand
equals money in your pocket.

Yet in a 21st-century U.S. economy driven by digital transactions,
relying on cash alone cuts you out of the mainstream. According to a
federal survey released last fall, more than 8 percent of U.S.
households qualify as unbanked. That means 17 million adults without
checking or savings accounts. For them, the cash economy is the
economy. Another 24 million households qualified as underbanked,
meaning someone in the house had a bank account but within the past
year had also used non-bank “alternative financial services” such as
payday loans or check-cashing.

But cash doesn’t work well for many kinds of payments, Shader says.
Rent. Loan payments. Online purchases. Basically money destined for
anyone you can’t just walk down the street and hand it to. Shader says
his company bridges that physical divide by making paying anyone with
cash as easy as going to 7-Eleven.

Here’s how it works: Say you’re a tenant in an apartment complex run
by a property management company based in another city or another
state. Handing over a wad of bills isn’t an option. If that property
manager is signed up, you can go to the PayNearMe website, find
yourself in the tenant database, and get a barcode (printed on paper
or sent to your smartphone). Take that barcode to 7-Eleven, get it
scanned and pay the cashier your rent in cash. You’re done.

“The transaction runs at the speed of buying a Slurpee,” Shader says.

A veteran tech entrepreneur who has sold companies to Amazon and
Motorola, Shader started working on PayNearMe just under four years
ago. Until now, PayNearMe has worked directly with larger businesses,
including Greyhound and Amazon. (In California, you can also
apparently use PayNearMe to fund your account with Xpressbet, a site
that lets you wager on horse-racing online.)

Starting today, small and medium-sized businesses can set up an
account directly through the PayNearMe website to start taking remote
cash payments themselves. The account costs $199, and consumers pay
$3.99 per payment.

PayNearMe’s backers clearly see the cash economy as a moneymaking
opportunity. The company just booked $10 million in its latest round
of financing, led by August Capital. Shader pitches the service as a
boon to the unbanked and underbanked, a major chunk of the U.S.
population on the financial margins. But he also says the ability to
take cash without the headaches of physically handling it has
advantages for those on the receiving end: “Cash,” Shader says,
“doesn’t bounce.”