Survey finds savers prefer banking on mobile phones

Mobile phone money services have become the preferred avenue of savings around sub-Saharan Africa according to a study published by a global mobile operators’ lobby.

The 2012 Global Mobile Money Adoption Survey shows that 81.8 million cellphone subscribers had mobile money accounts, with global use of the handsets for deposits growing by almost 38 per cent.

The annual survey is conducted by Mobile Money for the Unbanked (MMU). The programme was launched five years ago to accelerate the availability of mobile money services to the unbanked poor who live on less than $2 (Sh170) per day.

The lobby works with mobile operators and the financial industry to deliver affordable, safe, and convenient financial services to millions of previously unbanked customers.

The report identified six services with more than one million active customers accounts with three of them having crossed the one million members threshold during the year.

In some countries like Kenya there are more mobile money transfer accounts - 26 million - than bank accounts - 15 million.

(Read: Mobile cash deposits hit Sh205 billion)

“There are now 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,” said GSMA Mobile for Development Managing Director Chris Locke.

There are 56.9 million registered mobile money customers in sub-Saharan Africa and in June 2012, they were two times the number of Facebook users.

More than half of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa - 34 out of 47 - have live deployments and 37 per cent of the 166 mobile networks operators in the region had already launched mobile money.

“Penetration will continue to grow since the majority of planned deployments are also in sub-Saharan Africa,” says the report.

The GMMAS survey adds that mobile money also helps to bring banking services closer to the people even in places where banks had never been heard of before.

In Kenya, mobile phone companies have mooted various services that include savings, cash transfer, loans, bill payments as well as purchase of airtime.

Statistics from the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) indicate that the total value of money transacted on the six mobile platforms — including Mobicash and Tangaza — grew two times from Sh732 billion in 2010 to Sh1.5 trillion at the end of last year.

M-Pesa, which controls about 80 per cent of the mobile money transfer market, earned Sh10.4 billion from fees in the six months to September 2012.

Safaricom in partnership with Commercial Bank of Africa CBA last year launched M-Shwari for M-PESA customers that allows one to save through their phone, earn interest and borrow.

In some countries, the total value of mobile money transactions is equivalent to a significant proportion of the country´s overall GDP. In Kenya it was equivalent to more than 60 per cent of GDP as at June 2012 compared to 30 per cent and 20 per cent of GDP in Tanzania, and Uganda, respectively.

The research shows more than 30 million people globally undertook 224.2 million transactions totalling Sh386billion ($4.6 billion) in June 2012 alone.

Of the 150 live mobile money services for the unbanked, 41 were launched in 2012 as industry players positioned themselves to meet the growing demand.