GSMA Releases Its Survey on Mobile Money – Africa Leads

Africa now accounts for 70% of the world’s $1tr mobile money value. The value of Africa’s mobile money transactions edged up 39% to $701.4bn in 2021 from $495bn in 2020, highlighting the future of African banking is mobile. GSMA’s figures released on Apr. 21, show the volume of mobile money transactions jumped 23% to $36.7bn in 2021 from $27.5bn in 2020. In the review period, registered mobile wallets in Africa topped 621m, a 17% increase from 562m captured in 2020. According to GSMA, the total global transaction value in 2021 was $1.045tn, up 31% from 2020.

While the trillion-dollar mark was a long-awaited goal of the industry, the GSMA had initially predicted it would not be achieved until 2023. But several years of robust growth have prompted earlier forecasts to be revised more than once, due in part to the push for digitization during the COIVID pandemic. There are now over 184m active mobile money wallets on the continent compared to 161m accounts just over a year before. In the coming years, the GSMA projects growth to come from both long-established mobile money markets and markets where mobile money services are still nascent, especially in South Asia and African countries such as Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Angola.