It has been set up by UAP Insurance of Kenya, Safaricom, Kenya's biggest mobile-network operator, and the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture, part of a big Swiss agribusiness group.
In the emerging world , the most famous mobile payments success is in Kenya, where M-Pesa , the P2P payments service of mobile phone supplier Safaricom, has effectively created an alternative banking and payments system.
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In 2008, it launched the China African News Service while in April last year it teamed up with telecommunications firm Safaricom to start a mobile newspaper in Kenya.
In Kenya, the M-Pesa mobile money transfer system was launched in 2007 and is now woven into the fabric of everyday life.
Kenya is a regional leader in financial services and he expects the popular mobile channel will be a key to its growth throughout both Kenya and neighboring countries.
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He's often busy talking into one of his two mobile phones or networking with Kenya's most well-known stars.
They include Applied Solar, which also plans to build power plants for Indian cell towers, and M-KOPA, a startup created by the founders of M-PESA, the leading mobile-payment service in Kenya and Tanzania.
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"The bulk of our sales come from the 60 and 25 cents-valued phone cards and this is because the people who buy them depend on a daily income, " said a senior marketer at Safaricom, a leading mobile phone service provider in Kenya.
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African banks are using mobile technology far more than is common in the U.S. In Kenya, bank customers can pay their utility bills, and even bread and milk delivery through their mobile phones.
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But the simple, low-cost mobile-banking systems that operate in countries such as Kenya, India or Brazil suggest otherwise.
Another business to make the 16 best performers was Kenya's Equity Bank, which the study said had pioneered mobile banking in its nation's rural areas.
The continent has, at a pace far outstripping the west, adopted mobile payment systems in huge numbers - more than 15 million in Kenya alone.
Second, Kenya has undergone a revolution since 2007, when M-PESA, a mobile-payments system operated by Safaricom, a phone company, was launched (see chart).
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Mobile phones have proven dynamite in other developing countries in providing banking services where no banks exist ( Kenya is a well-documented pioneer).
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