They didn't do their research. The 2020 Oliver Wyman Digital Bank Index scored South Africa 4.8 out of eleven countries measured, second only to Singapore's 5.3, sitting ahead of Spain, Switzerland, Germany, the USA, the UK, France and Italy, well above the study's average of 4.2. Our banks posted 7.3 for sales capability, the highest score any country recorded in the whole study, beating even Singapore's own 6.4. Now ask why Vodacom's M-Pesa never worked here. It launched in Kenya in 2007, into a country where roughly eight in ten adults had no bank account, so it filled a real gap. That gap grew into a service that now moves value worth about four times Kenya's own GDP every year. Vodacom brought the identical model to South Africa in 2010, chasing 10 million users. By the time the service shut down in 2016, only 76,000 of the million people who signed up were still active. That was never a marketing failure. It was a company trying to sell a bank account to a country where three out of four adults already had one, a card in their wallet and a branch down the road.