Mobile money competition heats up as fifth telecom launches service

                                        
Competition on the mobile money battle front among service providers has intensified even further, after yet another telecom; SMART Telecom launched a mobile money service over the weekend.

The launch of SMART Pesa brings to five the number of Telecom companies in the business of mobile money, the others being MTN Uganda, Airtel Uganda, Uganda Telecom and Uganda Telecom.

The latest player in the business is also the first player to introduce a flat rate for all money transfers—sh400 to send money up to sh4m.

"You do not have to pull out your calculator every time you want to send money to someone," said Abdellatif Bouziani, the SMART Group CEO at the launch in Kampala.

When MTN Uganda launched the first mobile money service in 2009, it was only used for sending and receiving money.

However, as more telecoms and service providers joined the mobile money bandwagon, more features such as bill payment, airtime buying features have been added onto mobile money services.

There is talk by industry analysts of mobile money service providers venturing into credit facilities in the near future.

Despite instances of fraud, mobile money has become a hit with the Ugandan population, majority of who are locked out of the formal banking system.

According to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS), the total number of registered customers increased by 30.1 percent from 14.2 million customers in 2013 to 18.5 million customers in 2014.