At least, sixty million customers have registered for mobile money services globally, according to the 2011 Global Mobile Money Adoption Survey released by the GSMA May 9, 2012.
This number of customers was recorded as at June 30, 2011.
“The 52 mobile money service providers who participated in our survey reported having registered a total of 60 million customers as of June 30, 2011,” the GSMA said.
And 11 services reported having more than one million registered customers in June 2011, according to the survey adding “together, these 11 services accounted for 85% of the registered customers reported in our survey”.
The GSMA considered the 60 million customers as active although the total number excluded active customers of Safaricom’s M-PESA and SMART Money.
Of the other 50 services in our sample, only two reported having more than a million active customers, the survey indicated.
The report showed that majority of the mobile money transactions were processed by Safaricom as 80% of the transactions processed in June 2011 occurred in East Africa.
Participants in the survey counted almost 264,000 mobile money agents in June 2011, a 22% rise than the December 2010 figures.
The GSMA explains that the main objective of the global survey was to provide a more accurate picture of the extent of consumer adoption of mobile money around the world.
By Ekow Quandzie