The rise of Mobile Money
The rise of Mobile Money
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ecent statistics from yStas4 for 2012 found that mobile payments increased by 70% in 2012 mostly resulting from massive growth in China, South Africa and India. Three digit percentage growth in North and Latin America is predicted showing that mobile money is here to stay. The mobile money industry is expected to grow from $13.8 billion in 2013 to $278.9 billion by 2018, according to a study released this month by global research group MarketsandMarkets, which estimates there will be about 5.3 billion mobile phones worldwide this year5. It is an industry which is continuing to grow rapidly. There are currently 150 live mobile money services, 41 of which were launched in 2012. There are almost 30 million active users of mobile money services who performed 224.2 million transactions totalling $4.6 billion during the month of June 2012. There are 81.8 million registered customers globally and, in June 2012, there were twice as many mobile money users than Facebook users in Sub-Saharan Africa. With over 520,000 registered agent outlets,
there are now just as many mobile money outlets globally as Western Union points of sale.6 Of the success stories globally East Africa stands out with Kenya, Madagascar, Tanzania and Uganda now having more mobile money accounts than bank accounts. There were more than half a million mobile money agents in June 2012, and there are now more mobile money agent outlets than bank branches in at least 28 countries. So far, the most popular use for mobile money has been domestic person-to-person money transfers. This replaces risky, slow and inconvenient cash transactions with a much safer, cheaper and more convenient means via the mobile channel. There is a strong global skew in the uptake of mobile money with the developing world taking the lead. Six of the eight fastest growing mobile money providers are in East Africa. Pakistan and the Philippines also have strong growth
4. http://ystats.com/en/reports/preview.php?reportId=986 5. http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/battle-commences-for-mobile-money-20130226-2f2mr.html#ixzz2MxCVclWw 6. http://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/MMU_State_of_industry.pdf