Money is going mobile in a big way, suggests a new report issued by the GSMA on the occasion of this year’s Mobile World Congress.
Among the notable findings in the mobile alliance’s new “State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money” is the news that at the end of 2018, there were over 866 million mobile financial services accounts registered across 90 countries. That’s a 20 percent increase over 2017, suggesting that mobile money is rapidly gaining traction as financial services continue to go digital and smartphones get into the hands and pockets of more users around the world.
That all adds up to a lot of money changing hands, too, with the GSMA’s report estimating that the mobile money industry processed $1.3 billion in transactions per day during 2018.
And that’s good news for many in the world who have hitherto faced financial exclusion. As GSMA Director General Mats Granryd explained in a statement announcing the findings, “The mobile money industry is fast-evolving against a backdrop of increasing internet access and smartphone adoption, and now more than ever, mobile’s unparalleled global scale provides a tremendous opportunity to reach the 1.7 billion people who remain financially excluded.”
It’s also good news, in turn, for the various tech companies that have been deepening their exploration of the payments market, with mobile platforms like Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Pay poised to benefit from the growing adoption of mobile money around the world.
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