The Role of Mobile Money Accounts

There is a sustained point made around the role of mobile money accounts particularly in developing/Global South countries, with a view that mobile money is a displacer of cash. Analysis by Matt Sykes of the CPT Group [1] of data published by GSMA [2] suggests that it is more complex than that.

The table of volumes by broad type of transaction (the original data was USD but has been converted to percentage by type, by region).

In almost every region the big three areas of activity are the same: cash-in, cash-out, and P2P transfer. Sykes suggests this indicates that mobile money accounts are used as a convenient way to send and receive money person-to-person (ie. P2P) and users load their account and then withdraw from their account in order to use cash for many transactions. The flows that go to merchants and to pay bills are remarkably small.