NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Friday, May 9, 2014

Nigeria will not be a beneficiary of the landmark deal struck by major telecoms operators in Africa for the implementation of interoperable mobile money services across Africa and the Middle East regions. This is so because no telecoms operator from Nigeria is licensed to provide mobile money services, according to CommunicationsWeek.

Global System for Mobile Association (GSMA) an umbrella body of mobile networks had announced that nine mobile network operators, including Bharti Airtel, Etisalat Group, Millicom, MTN Group, Ooredoo Group, Orange, STC Group, Vodafone Group and Zain Group, have committed to work together to accelerate the implementation of interoperable mobile money services across Africa and the Middle East regions.

But this is of no economic importance to telecommunications companies in Nigeria because none have the licence to operate mobile banking services. Nigeria operates a bank-led mobile banking model where a bank deploys mobile payment applications or devices to customers and ensures merchants have the required point-of-sale (PoS) acceptance capability.