While Kenya's traditional commercial banks competed for corporate clients, Equity Bank continued its expansion into the previously unbanked. By 2016, Equity had launched Equitel, its own mobile banking service, directly challenging Safaricom's M-Pesa on its own territory.
The competition between Equity and Safaricom represented a broader shift in how financial services were delivered in Kenya: through the phone, not the branch. The consumer who had never had a bank account now had two competing financial services fighting for their business.
Financial inclusion, once a policy aspiration, had become a commercial reality.