Audio By Vocalize
This morning, a mama mboga needed Sh5,000 to restock. She tapped her phone, and 90 seconds later the money hit her M-Pesa. No logbook, no payslip, no guarantor. That same morning, a credit committee sat down to decide whether to release Sh2 million of stock to a distributor they'd supplied for three years.
They opened his audited accounts from 18 months ago, a bank reference, and a trade reference he'd chosen himself. Then they argued for an hour.
Look at those two decisions. The app lending 5,000 read 100 live signals about how that woman handles money. The committee vetting Sh2 million; read a story the customer curated about a version of himself that expired a year and a half ago. The small loan was the smarter one. That gap is where credit is going, and most corporates are on the wrong side of it.
A sharper question is winning. Not what you own, but what you do. The answer lives in behaviour.
