Page 42 - State-of-the-Industry-2013

State OF the induStry 2013

the state of the

mobile money

ecosystem

Key findings
• In 2013, transactions involving external companies have been driving the growth in mobile
money globally, representing 29% of the value transacted in June. These transactions are
also growing much faster than airtime top-ups and on-net transfers.

• Over 53k merchants and 16k companies are using mobile money as an efcient and
afordable way to accept and make payments

Once the foundations of a mobile money service have been established, service providers can signifcantly grow the volume of
transactions by developing a mobile money ecosystem around their platform. indeed, given the low penetration of banking and card
payments in a large number of markets, many companies are struggling to fnd efcient and afordable ways to accept payments and
scalable billing options. actively getting companies, merchants, and government institutions to use mobile money as a payment platform
can generate very large transaction volumes for deployments that have already built a strong agent network and a large and active
customer base (See text box 10 to read about the example of econet zimbabwe).

how big is the global mobile money ecosystem?

In June 2013, 27.3 million transactions totalling $998m USD were processed across mobile money platforms and involved an external
company, e.g. bill payments, bulk payments, merchant payments, international remittances, transfers between mobile money accounts
and bank accounts as well as of-net P2P transfers to unregistered users. this represents 8% of volume and 29% of value of transactions
for the industry in june 2013, compared to 7% and 24% in September 2012.

Transactions involving external companies are also growing faster than airtime top-up and on-net P2P transfer (CaGr of 219%
and 197% respectively).

A large number of companies and merchants have started to use mobile money as an efcient and
16k june 2013, 53k merchants were accepting payments via mobile money, 12k of which efectively accepted a
afordable way to accept and make payments at a large scale. data from our sample reveals that as of

payment in june 2013. 16k organisations are using mobile money as a payment platform for accepting bill
payment (3k) or making bulk payments (13k).

organisations using South Asia has the highest proportion of transactions involving external companies, driven mainly by bill
mobile money as a and bulk payments. east africa & Pacifc has focused more on international remittances, and latin america is
platform to make or
accept payments building out the ecosystem through integrating mobile money within the existing formal fnancial ecosystem.

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