M-PESA in the UK please ASAP

It costs US $15 to wire US $90 from the US to the UK and UK £12 to wire US $105 from the UK to the US. This is blatant extortion and what's more the aggravation involved in a) trying to receive the money (apparently the Western Union agents between Waterloo and Camberwell Green are only interested in sending money given they told me the network was down on the afternoon of 21 May, despite subsequent evidence to the contrary) and b) sending the money belongs to a bygone era.

If Kenyans can send and receive money via their mobile phones, then surely we should be able to do international transfers from the UK (this notwithstanding), especially since Vodafone partnered with Safaricom to set up mpesa initially.

M-PESA, a world first

Africa is known as the cradle of civilization although what's going on in certain parts of the continent, today, is uncivilised at best and downright savagery at worst. Anyway, I digress.

Safaricom (Kenya) in conjunction with Vodafone (UK) has rolled out M-PESA, a mobile payment solution that allows mobile phone users to send and receive money via their mobile handset, at a fraction of the cost of traditional money transfers.

M-PESA's ultimate target market is the Kenyan Diaspora who remit a significant amount of money to the folks back home. One of the more impressive statistics is that approximately 1 in 4 Kenyans has a mobile phone and the expectation is that the number of mobile subscribers will continue its rapid upward trajectory. Using M-PESA does not require one to have a bank account which is a big plus. Another is the fact that one can transfer money to a relative who maybe on a different network (read Celtel).

First Kenya, next the world!!

****UPDATE****
You can read more here