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

Thursday, June 16, 2016

The mobile money industry continues to grow globally, with more than 270 live mobile money services in 93 countries. In Uganda, the amount of money transacted through mobile money by December 2015 was UGx. 32.5 trillion according to the Bank of Uganda.

This growth however is not the same for mobile money use cases. According to GSMA Intelligence reports, mobile money usage continues to be dominated by two use cases: person-to-person (P2P) transfers and airtime top-ups. Mobile money providers are exploring new models and products – such as account-to-account (A2A) interoperability, international remittances, merchant payments, salary disbursements and government-to-person (G2P) transfers – but the volumes and values of these represent only a minority of overall transactions.

International remittances are a major and stable source of income for people in many developing markets with mobile money as both the sending and the receiving channel.