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The GSMA’s Mobile Money for the Unbanked (MMU) programme released the findings of its second annual Global Mobile Money Adoption Survey to analyze the state of the mobile money industry in 2012.
The research shows the number of active mobile money users grew impressively with more than 30 million people undertaking 224.2 million transactions totaling $4.6 billion during the month of June 2012 alone. The impressive figure exceeds the 196.3 million transactions performed by PayPal customers on average each month during Q3 2012.
The study demonstrates that the mobile money industry continues to expand at an unparalleled rate, with 150 live mobile money services for the unbanked, 41 of which were launched in 2012. In addition, the industry is also becoming increasingly competitive, with 40 markets identified as having at least two different mobile money services available.
GSMA’s report counted 81.8 million registered customers globally and the number of deployments on a global basis growing by almost 38%. There are also 6 services with more than 1 million active customer accounts and in the last 12 months, three of these services have crossed the 1 million active customers threshold.
It’s also worth adding that in some countries — including Kenya, Madagascar, Tanzania and Uganda — there are now more mobile money accounts than bank accounts. In fact, the total value of mobile money transactions is equivalent to a significant proportion of the country’s overall GDP — in June 2012, it was equivalent to more than 60% of GDP in Kenya, more than 30% of GDP in Tanzania, and more than 20% of GDP in Uganda.
And you can get the full report from here.
About The Author
Dusan Belic
Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do. In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application. Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis.
