MTN Uganda set for 75 p.c rise in money transfer subscribers

MTN Uganda, a subsidiary of South Africa’s MTN, expects users of mobile money services to grow 75 per cent by 2012 giving people in rural areas the chance to build businesses and safely transfer money.

“It has grown to a scale we never expected,” Richard Mwami, head of mobile money at MTN Uganda told Reuters ahead of the GSMA’s Mobile Money summit in Rio de Janeiro, which kicks off on May 24.

The expansion of mobile money is a trend that is being played out in developing countries around the world.

MTN Uganda expects more than 2 million users of its mobile money services by the end of the year and 3.5 million users by 2012.

“We currently have registered 890,000 mobile money users, around 16 per cent of our subscriber base,” Mwami said.

MTN Uganda has a market share of 60 per cent. Kuwait mobile operator Zain and Orange also operate in east Africa’s third largest economy.

Aletha Ling, executive director of Fundamo, the world’s leading provider of software and services for mobile money to network operators such as MTN Uganda and banks, said the use of mobile financial services “changes the entire ecosystem of a village.

“A woman who has a fishing boat, would smoke the fish and move with her cash up and down the country. But this would get her robbed on the way and that and nearly wiped out the business,” she said, adding such problems are eliminated with mobile money.

Some $195 million have passed through the platform since its launch in March 2009 with around 11.8 million transactions since then, Mwami said.

Juniper Research has estimated that more than 500 million people around the world will use mobile money transfer services by 2014, principally in developing countries.

The telecom trade body GSMA has predicted that operators could make $5 billion from financial services by “banking” 364 million unbanked people by 2012.

In Kenya 11 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product is moved via mobile money through Safaricom’s mobile phone based money transfer service known as M-Pesa, said Greg Reeve, head of mobile payment solution at Vodafone, which partners with Safaricom.

“We will be launching in South Africa and you will see some other announcements soon,” he added.

Vodafone also offers M-Pesa mobile money in Afghanistan and Tanzania.

In Kenya, it has also introduced a new service known as M-Kesho, which is available to M-Pesa users and Kenya’s Equity Bank’s account holders, allowing users to gain access to credit, earn interest on deposits and buy insurance.

The Uganda Communications Commission projects revenues from the telecoms sector will increase at an annual rate of 25 to 30 per cent over the next five years, underpinned by a rapid uptake of internet services.

UCC head Patrick Mwesiga said the rate of mobile phone penetration was seen slowing over the next few years but said the market still held potential in a nation of 33 million people.

Uganda has six main telecommunications operators with MTN Uganda controlling more than half of the market.

Active SIM user numbers increased to 9.5 million by the end of last year from 3.5 million in 2006.

Mwesiga said internet penetration would grow rapidly because of the undersea cables like Seacom and TEAMS and EASSy which have landed at the (Kenyan) coast.”

Fibre optic

The arrival of the fibre optic has seen a fall in bandwidth tariffs in Kenya.

However many businesses and consumers still remain frustrated with connectivity speeds and prices.

Most Ugandans say they have seen little change in the quality of connection speeds even though a growing number of internet service providers are hooking up to the cables.

Mwesigwa said the problem had been the monopoly of Seacom and a limited national backbone infrastructure.

“We didn’t see a dramatic change when Seacom landed but now there’s competition and it will impact our market,” he said.

The UCC said industry players jointly invested $320 million last year compared to $73 million in 2006.