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.