Africa leads the pack in mobile money transfers

New research has revealed a boom in mobile money transfer services – with $2bn in revenues forecast for this year and $4bn annually by 2018.

Undertaken by UK-based Juniper Research,  Mobile Money Transfer & Remittance: Domestic & International Markets 2015-2020,  points to Africa as the leading market.

Several African mobile operators – such as Vodacom Tanzania and MTN Uganda - are now generating more than 10% of their revenues from mobile money, according to the report. Meanwhile, Safaricom’s MPESA service, the trailblazer in the sector, recorded mobile money revenues of more than $330m in the latest financial year, making it the most successful mobile or online money transfer service worldwide, the report states.

According to the research, recent surges in both transaction volumes and values are being driven by increased implementation of both cross-border and intra-national remittance interoperability. The research cited the traffic uplifts engendered by recent agreements between Safaricom and MTN (for the Rwanda-Kenya corridor) and by national interoperability agreements in markets such as Tanzania and Pakistan.

The research also observed that in Nigeria a number of services had failed to gain repeat usage because of the high cash-out fees, while savings accounts in other markets had withdrawal fees that were inappropriate for low-income users/savers.