Mobile money accounts are expected to grow by 39 percent of the sub-Saharan population by 2025, a global mobile money 2021 report shows.
The 2022 State of the Industry report revealed that sub-Saharan African adults with mobile money accounts doubled from 12% in 2014 to 21% in 2017. By 2021, the number of registered accounts reached 1.35 billion globally. world, 18% more than the previous year. year, which is 10 times more than in 2012.
In addition, the mobile money industry processed more than $1 trillion in transactions in 2021. Year-over-year increases in transaction values were driven by new customer uptake and a growing number of mobile money accounts in use, according to the report.
Nika Naghavi, CEO of Mobile Network Operators at MFS Africa, at TechCabal’s Future of Commerce event in September, expressed her agreement with the GSMA about a possible explosion of mobile money operations in Nigeria. According to her, the entry of telcos like MTN and Airtel into the Nigerian mobile money market is a big trend for mobile money on the African continent.
“Mobile money adoption in Nigeria through MTN and Airtel will change the landscape and introduce innovative services and partnerships that will differ from what we have seen so far,” he said.
“Nigeria has the largest unbanked population in Africa, and while its payments industry has flourished, there is hardly a leading player banking the unbanked sustainably. This is where mobile money comes in,” he added.
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Research by the Grameen Foundation, in partnership with the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth, shows that user experience is an important factor in the growth of mobile money services, especially among poor users with little or no banking experience. formal.
Data published by the GSMA in 2021 indicated that 5.3 billion people had subscribed to mobile services, representing 67% of the world’s population.
The report shows that there will be an additional 400 million new mobile subscribers by 2025, most of whom will be from border markets in Asia Pacific and Sub-Saharan Africa, bringing the total number of subscribers to 5.7 billion, representing 70 percent. of the world population.
As the largest of Africa’s fast-growing economies, Nigeria is a promising market for mobile financial services. More than 80 percent of adults have access to a mobile phone and 64 percent own a phone.
However, data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) shows that the number of active mobile subscribers stood at 214 million in October 2022.
Telephone connections per 100 people stood at 112.5 percent between January and October 2022, according to the NCC.
Similarly, the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA), ‘the database of global financial inclusion and employs logistics models’ highlighted the drivers of mobile money adoption, said: “having a bank account, being in workforce, receiving domestic remittances, owning a mobile phone, and having a national ID all favor the adoption of mobile money when measured as a global state.”
According to Google, mobile money is defined as the use of mobile phones to carry out financial transactions, which can bring many benefits to people, particularly in developing countries.
An analysis of the report titled ‘Financial Inclusion, Digital Payments and Resilience in the Age of COVID-19’ showed that Nigeria’s banked population increased by 15.6 percentage points to 45.3% in 2021, the highest in 10 years since 29.7% in 2011. 45.3 percent ranked Africa’s largest economy 18th out of 25 SSA countries.
Similarly, the number of registered mobile money agent outlets per thousand square meters in Nigeria has risen by 380.2 percent to 680.9 in 2021 from 141.8 in 2020, a Fund survey shows. International Monetary Fund (IMF).
“Mobile money agents are closing the unbanked gap by bringing more people into the financial network, says Moses Ojo, a Lagos-based economic analyst.
“They are bringing those who are not financially included into the network by opening accounts for them and also undertaking financial transactions for them,” Ojo said.
He also said that for the economy, increasing the financial inclusion rate is helping to meet the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) of increasing financial inclusion to 95 percent in 2024 from 64 percent in 2020.
