I got a chance to spend some time with Nick Hughes this afternoon at the Said Business School over lunch.

Organized by the Skoll Centre for social Entrepreneurship, he was here to meet with students to discuss the future of mobile payments.


His bio was impressive.

Nick was most recently the Head of Global Payments at Vodafone, where he started M-PESA, the world’s largest mobile money transfer service (with more than 10 million users in Kenya.)  Nick initiated the M-PESA concept 2004 and grew the business unit into a multi-million euro P&L deploying M-PESA in multiple markets. Earlier, Nick set up an innovation fund within Vodafone to target opportunities in mobile services. Prior to joining Vodafone in 2001, Nick worked at BP, where he headed the climate change program for two years. He holds a PhD In Applied Science, and has an MBA with distinction from London Business School.

Since I had nothing else to do on a Friday afternoon, I decided to listen to him, and it was well worth my time.

In case you have never heard about M-PESA, you can read up here or watch one of their earliest commercials in Kenya.

http://idrisbello.com/2012/01/27/an-afternoon-with-an-m-trepreneur-nick-hughes-founder-m-pesa-mobile-money-platform/