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Americans may think of themselves as early adopters when it comes to new technology, but this chart of how fast Kenya adopted mobile money, or payments by cell phone, by World Bank blogger and economist Wolfgang Fengler , shows how big a role cultural and social needs can play. According to World Bank figures, about 80 percent of cell phone users in Kenya use mobile money. Just over four years ago, virtually nobody in Kenya was using mobile payments. By comparison, a survey by the Federal Reserve found that 42 percent of Americans don't trust mobile payments to be secure. Less than 12 percent of respondents said they'd made mobile payments in the past year.

Fengler's chart of the adoption of ICT (information and communications technology) shows how quickly the the percentage of mobile payments (in purple) followed the spread of mobile phones (in green). In 2011, the percentage of cell phone users exceeded the percentage of people over 15 years old, suggesting that most adults had mobile access. And you can see that mobile payment users now exceeds the number of people who have internet access. In other words, there are more people in Kenya that use mobile payments than there are people browsing the web on their laptops or desktop computers.