Mobile money, with two-hundred and ninety live services in ninety-five countries and three-hundred and seventy-two million active accounts, has entered the mainstream and is becoming the path to financial inclusion in most low-income countries, according to an annual report on the state of the industry published by the GSMA firm.
According to the report, sent to the African Press Agency (APA) on Tuesday, 7 April 2020 the industry processed $2 billion in transactions per day in 2019, with digital transactions accounting for the first time for fifty-seven percent of mobile money interactions worldwide.
Mobile money thus continues to invest in distribution networks, with the number of points of sale having almost tripled in the last five years.
The reach of a mobile money agent is now seven times greater than that of ATMs and twenty times greater than that of bank branches, GSMA noted, which claims more than seven-hundred and fifty operators and nearly four-hundred companies, belonging to the larger mobile ecosystem in the world.
Meanwhile, millions of migrants and their families enjoy the vital benefits of international remittances, which are known to be faster, safer and cheaper, and humanitarian cash assistance is delivered more efficiently to people in crisis.
Nevertheless, the report expressed serious concerns about certain policy decisions, such as sector-specific taxation and data location requirements, which put pressure on mobile money and create a real risk of long-term negative impacts on financial inclusion gains, access to innovative services and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
– APA
