According to the report, the mobile money industry continues to expand at an unparalleled rate, with 150 live mobile money services for the unbanked, 41 of which were launched in 2012. In addition, the industry is also becoming increasingly competitive, with 40 markets identified as having at least two different mobile money services available.
Furthermore, the report has counted 81.8 million registered customers globally and with the total number of deployments on a global basis growing by almost 38 percent, an increasing number of deployments are also achieving significant scale. The report has identified six services with more than 1 million active customer accounts and in the last 12 months, three of these services have crossed the 1 million active customers threshold.
The report has also found that there are 56.9 million registered customers in sub-Saharan Africa and in June 2012, there were twice as many mobile money users as Facebook users in the region. In terms of geographical spread, more than half of all countries in sub-Saharan Africa have live deployments and 37 percent of the 166 mobile networks operators in the region have already launched mobile money. Mobile money services are available in 34 of the 47 countries in the region and penetration will continue to grow in the region, since the majority of planned deployments are also in sub-Saharan Africa.
Finally, the report has revealed that there are more mobile money accounts than bank accounts in Kenya, Madagascar, Tanzania and Uganda, and more mobile money agent outlets than bank branches in at least 28 countries. With over 520,000 registered agent outlets, there are now as many mobile money outlets as Western Union points of sale. Further, in some countries, the total value of mobile money transactions is equivalent to a significant proportion of the countrys overall GDP; in June 2012, it was equivalent to more than 60 percent of GDP in Kenya, more than 30 percent of GDP in Tanzania and more than 20 percent of GDP in Uganda.
The report titled “Global Mobile Money Adoption Survey” was issued by association of mobile operators and related companies GSMA.
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