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

By John Mutua

Kenya remains the global leader in mobile banking, but its penetration lags Ghana and Rwanda, a new report shows.

The Mobile: Deeping Financial Inclusion But at a High Cost report shows that 72 percent of the banking population use their mobile phones to access their accounts, nearly three times the global average that stands at 25 percent.

This means that seven out of every 10 Kenyans are using their mobile phones to access their bank accounts for services to save or get loans coinciding with a change by the lenders and micro-financiers to adopt mobile and digital platforms that cut on operational costs.

Uganda is the closest to Kenya at 47 percent while Tanzania follows at 37 percent.

The average percentage of the banking population in the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is 21 percent while globally the Americas that includes the US has 68 percent usage of the platforms, according to the report by Egyptian investment bank EFG Hermes.