Business Primitives: Enabling Payment Lifecycles through Software

This paper by Ignacio Mas defines ‘business primitives’ as low-level operations from which higher-level, more complex operations can be constructed. It sets out to understand what most businesses in Kenya — the land of the ubiquitous M-PESA — do every day that could be simplified and reinforced through software. It focuses on potential functionalities related to payments and the management of payments.