In 2009, Equity Bank became the largest bank in Kenya by number of accounts, overtaking the long-established commercial banks that had served mainly the wealthy and the corporate sector. Equity had done something different. It had gone to the people who had never had bank accounts: rural farmers, market traders, boda boda riders, domestic workers. It reduced charges, opened branches in towns that other banks ignored and made financial services accessible to people who had previously operated entirely in cash. Banking was no longer just for the formally employed.