French multinational telecommunication company, Orange and pan-African banking group Ecobank recently launched a bank to wallet transfer service linked to Orange Money subscribers who also have bank accounts with Ecobank to transfer money between their respective accounts. This service rolled out in Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea Conakry and Niger shows the growing development in mobile payment across Africa.
Mobile phones have proven to be potential game-changers in boosting access to financial products and services to people in Africa. It has often been appraised based on its contribution to ‘banking the unbanked’, but mobile money has achieved much more, it has saved the continent nearly $2 billion previously lost annually to inefficient money transfers.
Prior to the launch of mobile money by MPESA in 2007, money was transferred in the form of airtime to the beneficiary who in turn sells the airtime in exchange for cash. This is due to the fact that they didn’t have bank accounts.
Bill Gates, in 2015, made a big bet that by 2030, almost everyone will have a mobile money account. He also said that “Not having access to a range of cheap and easy financial services makes it much more difficult to be poor.”
According to reports, more people have mobile money accounts than bank accounts in at least nine African countries, up from four in 2012. Africa, as a whole, leads the world in the adoption of financial services on the mobile platform.