Mobile phone-based money transfer services helped raise the percentage of Kenyan adults with access to banking services to 66.7 percent this year from 41 percent in 2009, a financial access survey showed. The east African nation of 40 million people has led the world in mobile phone-based financial services ever since its largest telecoms operator Safaricom invented a money transfer service called M-Pesa. "For the vast majority (76 percent) of the rural population, the nearest financial service provider is a mobile money agent," said the report by Financial Sector Deepening Trust Kenya and the central bank.



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