Page 14 - State-of-the-Industry-2013

State OF the induStry 2013

the mobile money

landscape in 2013

Key findings
• With 219 services in 84 countries at the end of 2013, mobile money is now available in most
developing and emerging markets.

• Competition is increasing globally and 52 markets have 2 or more mobile money services.
• Mobile money is becoming a strategically important service for a growing number of
providers, evidenced by the fact that 70% of providers plan to increase their investment
in mobile money in 2014.

number of mobile money services

The mobile industry reached a milestone at the end of Q3, surpassing 200 mobile money deployments. at the end of 2013, there were
219 services live in 84 countries, compared to 179 services in 75 countries at the end of 2012 (see fgure 1). Our deployment tracker has
also identifed 113 mobile money services that are planning to launch.

In 2013, mobile money was rolled out in nine new markets: Bolivia, Brazil, egypt, ethiopia, Guyana, jamaica, tajikistan, togo, and
vietnam. regulatory reforms that are enabling mobile money services are contributing to the growth of the industry in terms of
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number of deployments.

With a year-on-year increase (YOY) of just 22%, the growth of mobile money services is now slowing down. this deceleration in the
number of new launches between 2012 and 2013 is true across all regions although there are signifcant variations. With a year-on-year
increase of 53%, latin america is showing the strongest growth in number of new mobile money services. this deceleration seems to
be a natural consequence of the fact that mobile money is now available in most developing markets, rather than the result of mobile
money services closing down.

regional expansion
52% In 2013, mobile money has signifcantly expanded outside of Sub-Saharan Africa, although the lion’s

share of live mobile money services remains in the region. at the end of 2013, 52% of live services were
in this region. this follows a decreasing trend (in 2012, Sub-Saharan africa represented 56% and in 2011
it represented 58%). We expect this percentage to fall below 50% next year as the majority of planned
of mobile money
services are in deployments are outside the region (see table 2).
Sub-Saharan Africa
With 19 planned mobile money launches, Latin America has the second largest number of planned deploy-
ments. For a long time, Sub-Saharan africa led the industry, with the vast majority of deployments, success
stories, and best practices coming from the region. today this is changing, and innovative regional models are
beginning to emerge (read text box 1 for more information about the new models emerging in latin america).

4. For a comprehensive discussion of the regulatory reforms that support the sustainable growth of mobile money deployments, see Simone di Castri (2013), “mobile money: enabling regulatory Solutions”, GSma mobile
money for the unbanked. available at http://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/mmu-enabling-regulatory-Solutions-di-Castri-2013.pdf
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