A few years ago, the mobile operators were highly excited about mobile money services, believing this would be an essential element of consumer behavior, which they could control and secure via the SIM cards. But cloud-based alternatives emerged from Google and the smartphone makers, and m-payments proved another false dawn for operators in developed markets – but not in emerging economies, especially some African countries, where telcos like Vodafone and Orange are playing a significant role in the local economies. Today, there are an estimated 690m people who use mobile financial services and over 100m of them live in Africa. The biggest name is m:pesa, which Vodafone and its subsidiaries operate in Kenya and other countries. Now Orange – which…