According to recent research published by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), entitled “Africa Blazes a Trail in Mobile Money: Time for Banks and Mobile Operators to Devise Strategies, sub-Saharan Africans are looking for more secure ways to borrow and save money and are open to other financial products delivered using mobile phones, including loans and insurance.
Although mobile financial services are emerging all over the world, sub-Saharan Africas unique circumstances, a combination of a mostly unbanked population and heavy mobile-phone penetration, have turned the region into an early adopter of mobile banking and a test bed for the technologys potential. Eight of the ten countries that make the most use of mobile financial services are in Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa has the highest proportion of active accounts (43%) the study indicates.
The report predicts that with the population in sub-Saharan Africa growing and becoming wealthier, the number of people aged 15 or older with an individual annual income USD 500 or more will rise to more than 460 million by 2019. According to BCG, by 2019 there will also be some 400 million unique mobile-phone subscribers and almost 150 million traditionally banked sub-Saharan Africans. That will leave some 250 million sub-Saharan Africans aged 15 or older who have incomes of USD 500 or more and mobile phones but no traditional bank account. This gives a sense of the potential market for mobile financial services.
The study concludes that in order to succeed, banks and MNOs will need to invest in infrastructure, business functionalities and governance. A critical piece of infrastructure is a network of agents. These are the physical places where sub-Saharan African consumers can sign up for a mobile financial service and make deposits and withdrawals, the equivalent of the terrestrial worlds bank branches, the report adds.
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