IEEE exhibition

I managed to visit the just concluded IEEE exhibition on 14th and 15th at the Sarit Centre, and was amazed at how this annual event has grown over the last few years. When I was in University, it was much smaller and only had participants from about 3-5 institutions in Kenya. This year's event had participants from Sudan and Uganda among others.

My favourite presentation was MPAWA, an online payment gateway built on MPESA, done by Martin Kasomo. I'm eagerly waiting to see it fully implemented, as it is something I have always wanted to see out in the market and have not had much time to work on :).

It's also something close to that Whiteafrican has talked about, only that it is not operator agnostic..

All in all, there is a lot of interest from large players (Microsoft, Oracle, Celtel, Safaricom, Google had representatives) in what is happening in universities, which can only be a good thing.

Mobile Payments

With Safaricom intending to launch M-Pay sometimes this year, I've been on the look out for similar products in the world.

I came across this article that indicates that VISA are planning to launch a Global Mobile Phone Payment solution.

http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2007/01/08/tech-visa.html

I wonder whether this is going to affect Safaricom's product, or whether the two products are infact related somehow.

From the article, apparently a similar solution has been in use in Japan for sometime