By Juliet Umeh
Mobile money has experienced staggering growth over the past two decades, cementing itself as a mainstream financial service.
This is as a new report by a global organisation unifying the mobile ecosystem; GSMA has disclosed that global daily mobile money transactions reached a value of $3.5 billion in 2022 with $1.3 trillion processed by suppliers across the whole year.
In its State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money 2023, the industry association highlighted the daily figure had well exceeded the $3 billion predicted in the 2022 edition.
Alongside an increase in total and daily transaction values, there was also rapid growth in the number of registered accounts and use of bill payment services.
Across the globe, there were 1.6 billion registered mobile money accounts recorded for 2022, a 13 percent increase.
It noted: “This can be attributed, in part, to regulatory changes in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Nigeria and Ethiopia where mobile money adoption rose rapidly.
“Accounts active on a 30-day basis also grew at the same rate year on year, with Sub-Saharan Africa driving the bulk of this increase. More customers are using mobile money accounts more frequently across all use cases.”
The GSMA noted it had taken the industry 17 years from the first deployment to reach the first 800 million mobile money customers, compared with five years to reach the second 800 million.
In terms of providers, the industry association reported there were 315 live mobile money deployments across the world in 2022, but noted there was still work to be done with around 1.4 billion people still unbanked.
Across markets offering services, there was a 41 percent increase in the number of agents, with a significant part of that growth in Nigeria where the number of providers increased following regulatory changes.
GSMA head of mobile for development Max Cuvellier said mobile money “has afforded millions of unbanked and underserved people in low- and middle- income countries access to digital financial services.
“However, even with this significant growth, there is still a long way to go to bring those services to over a billion people worldwide who remain unbanked.”
