Over 70 per cent Kenyan of adults used mobile money in 2017, which ranks the country as one of the world’s foremost mobile money penetration nation, Citi Research posited. Uganda, Tanzania, and Ghana bring up the rear with over 40 to 50 per cent mobile money users.
According to this report, the number of adults using mobile money in Kenya is more than 70 per cent of the population which is higher than the number of adults holding traditional bank accounts which is at 55 percent. In other countries outside Africa like China, Chile, Turkey, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Brazil, and UAE, the mobile money usage is also high.
Citi Research opines that, “Safaricom’s M-Pesa model in Kenya grew as a result of the need to transfer funds by migrant labourers in an environment where bank account and formal payment penetration was low, the growth of mobile money.”
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“In China traces its roots to the rapid adoption of e-commerce and social media platforms that required an online payment option that subsequently grew offline.”
The report also indicated that the largest players in the mobile money scene globally include China’s Alibaba and Tencent, Safaricom of Kenya, Telenor in Asia, and Brac Bank in Bangladesh. The mobile money businesses are important to the economic growth of these countries, the report said.
“To gain exposure to mobile money growth, we believe the best place to start is the market leaders in Bangladesh (bKash) and Kenya (M-Pesa),” Citi Research adds.
It was also cited in the report that Kenya has a medium cash dependency unlike countries like Ghana, Nigeria, Egypt, India, Tanzania, Uganda, and Indonesia which have a high cash dependency. However, it is worth noting that the countries with a high cash dependency have a higher potential for growth in the mobile money sector than those that are already leading the space.
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