Safaricom / M-Pesa

Safaricom, Kenya's largest mobile operator, launched M-Pesa ('mobile money') in 2007, creating one of the most successful examples of business symbiosis in modern history. By transforming airtime resellers into cash agents earning commission on deposits and withdrawals, Safaricom built distributed financial infrastructure that banks had failed to create for decades.

M-Pesa demonstrates mutualism at scale: 30,000+ agents, 30 million customers, and transactions worth nearly 50% of Kenya's GDP. The system works because Safaricom's profit increases when agents prosper and customers save money - a genuine alignment of incentives rather than extraction. An estimated 2% of Kenyans escaped poverty because of M-Pesa access.

The M-Pesa model inverted traditional banking's extractive approach (minimum balances, monthly fees, transaction fees) into a mutualistic network where value creation is shared across all participants.