“Are banks dead?” asked Gavin Krugel at this year’s Mobile Money Summit. Variations of this question been posed by provocateurs in the mobile money world for years. Is it possible that mobile money services will solve so many of its users’ financial challenges that people will see little need for bank accounts, choosing to keep their money in m-wallets instead? In this vision, bank accounts in the developing world will be a bit like fixed-line telephones: used by a few, but not by the mass, and certainly not the poor.

A conversation I recently had with a taxi driver in Kenya—a country where more than half the adult population uses Safaricom’s M-PESA—illustrates why talk of the death of banks is unfounded. He explained that M-PESA is one of a portfolio of financial tools that he uses to manage his money, and that his bank is an indispensible part of that portfolio. In fact, I’ve come to believe that mobile money services can increase, rather than dampen, demand for traditional banking services.

John explains one reason why he still needs a bank: he prefers not to leave large balances in his M-PESA account because a criminal could coerce him into transferring money into his account. It may be that this risk is higher for taxi drivers, who come into contact with all kinds of characters, than for ordinary users. But he makes a more prosaic point, relevant to just about any saver: you can’t earn interest with M-PESA. John takes advantage of the linkages that Safaricom has created with a number of banks in Kenya, allowing him to sweep money from his M-PESA wallet into his bank account when his balance becomes large enough.

For John, M-PESA is a complement, not a replacement, for the bank. In fact, you can plausibly argue that M-PESA is increasing, not decreasing, the demand for bank accounts in Kenya. That’s how I interpret the extraordinary popularity of M-KESHO, an interest-bearing savings account linked to M-PESA which 176,000 people have started using in the last 3 months. By tearing down some of the barriers to bank usage (long queues, inconveniently located branches, minimum-balance requirements, etc.), M-PESA makes banking attractive to a whole new segment of consumers. And that’s something for customers, operators, and banks alike to celebrate.