Lightning News1 did an interview with the founder:
M-Pesa is at the center of daily life in Kenya. Everyone uses it—from buying groceries to paying rent. Instead of forcing people to learn new tools, I decided to meet them where they already are. That synergy between M-Pesa and bitcoin felt natural. It’s about bridging what people already trust with something powerful and new.
It’s beautifully simple.
- The user enters the amount they want to spend in KES—starting from as little as 50 KES (about $0.30).
- They input their Lightning wallet address.
- They enter their M-Pesa number, which triggers an STK push (payment prompt) on their phone. Once confirmed—pap!—they receive bitcoin almost instantly.
Under the hood, we fetch the live BTC price, validate wallet addresses, check available liquidity, process the mobile payment, and send sats via the Lightning Network—all streamlined into a smooth experience for the user.
Footnotes
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they do great interviews, which I'm so thankful for, but otherwise use AI too liberally for my tastes ↩