Technology changes lives and can offer almost limitless new business a opportunities. The seventh annual report by GSMA (represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide, uniting nearly 800 operators with almost 300 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem) on ‘State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money’ highlights how the global spread of mobile money is accelerating with 690 million accounts in 90 countries and growth particularly strong in South Asia:

Source & Copyright©2018 - GSMA 

The report also showed that 2017 was another record year for mobile money which now processes over a billion dollars a day. GSMA beieve that the mobile money industry is having a demonstrable impact on the global effort to extend access to financial services and to provide a gateway to the digital economy.

Understanding the Mobile Money market opportunity

The breakdown of the average value transactiond by the average mobile money customer shows that at the moment that the three main usages are for P2P transfers, cash-in and cash-out. And that the four other types of  transaction have yet to take off:

Source & Copyright©2018 - GSMA 

The usage of the mobile money in bulk disbursements, bill payment, merchant payments at POS, and airtime top-ups is where much of the new growth is expected to come from.

The report provides key insigths into the transactions of an average customer:

Source & Copyright©2018 - GSMA 

Mobile Money is changing lives and opening up opportunities

The availability of mobile money improves lives, by:

• reaching the hardest to reach: beyond the urban areas, women
• enabling humanitarian cash transfers with NGOs
• direct transfer of international remittances.

690 million accounts globally is a huge opportunity and opens up new ways your company can do business in the developing countries, e.g.:

• bill payment
• setting up savings accounts
• collecting digital payments at point of sale (see section in the GSMA report on “shifting from a cash economy to a digital ecosystem.”

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CTMfile take: Mobiles and mobile money = key to emerging markets.