Mobile money customers shoot to 19.5m

By David Mugabe

Registered mobile money customers have increased from 17.6 million to 19.5 million between June 2014 and June 2015, the central bank has disclosed.

Central bank governor, Emmanuel Tumusiime Mutebile in a speech at the Digital Impact Awards Africa (DIAA) recently acknowledged that mobile money transfer and banking services have had a transformative effect on access to financial services since they were first introduced in Uganda in 2009.

The average monthly value of mobile money transactions for the quarter ending June 30, 2015, was about sh2.5 trillion, up from a monthly average of about sh2.0 trillion for the corresponding period last year.

This growth is attributed to the gap that still exists in financial inclusion with the number of citizens with mobile money accounts far outstripping those that have bank accounts.

However, Bank of Uganda also pointed out that the stock of mobile money deposits and the value of mobile money transactions remain a small percentage of total deposits and transactions respectively, and as such they do not pose any systemic risk to the financial system.

“There is, therefore, no basis, at this time for the introduction of special regulations for mobile money transfer and banking services to mitigate systemic risks,” noted Mutebile acknowledging however that consumer protection concerns are valid.

The consumer concerns he said motivated the Bank of Uganda to adopt the regulatory model in which mobile money operators are required to collaborate with supervised financial institutions and maintain an escrow account with sufficient deposits to cover the mobile money that has been sold to their customers.

According to Innocent Kawooya, the DIAA chief executive, the awards focus on the transformative capacity of technology-based solutions like digital inclusion, financial inclusion and cyber security and building confidence and trust in the use of digital systems.

“Powerful and robust communications networks are a foundation of the global economy, and they are already sparking dramatic transformations in industries and society by enabling new ways of innovating, collaborating and socializing,” he said at the awards in which MTN scooped best mobile money platform, Standard Chartered as best online banker. Car dealer CHECKI was the best e-commerce, and Airtel TRACE was the best digital marketing campaign. Centenary Bank scooped the best financial inclusion impact

“In order to maximize the limitless Digital possibilities and build a sustainable ecosystem, individuals must play a center role to this effect,” said Kawooya again.

But to achieve this, he said investing in new ICT innovations and technology, bringing the benefits of broadband to more people who are still offline, bridging the digital gender gap, especially in rural areas of Africa, by empowering women through ICTs will be key drivers.

Prof Maggie Kigozi, former Uganda Investment Authority boss who made a presentation at the awards pointed out Uganda’s unique advantages among them the highly educated population, good English, French, Swahili-speaking population, liberalised economy and the resource-rich country capped with endless investment opportunities.

Kigozi referred to studies from the 2012 Global Entrepreneurship study that showed that Ugandans have identified opportunities are increasingly confident they have the capabilities with only 15% afraid to fail with ICT as an enabler.

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