Mobile Money Transfer Services In East Africa

People around the world, especially in East Africa, are paying their school fees, healthcare and utility bills using mobile phones today. Businesses use mobile money phones to pay their staff and suppliers. People who have never entered a bank are using mobile services to send or receive remittances and to save their money.

The EAC is a world leader in offering mobile money services and hosts more than one quarter of all known such systems in Africa.

With mobile money – the use of cell phones for money transfers and payments – increasingly popular in East Africa, a new report from the United Nations trade agency calls for region-wide rules to coordinate and harmonize regulations.

The report, Mobile Money for Business Development in the East African Community: A Comparative Study of Existing Platforms and Regulations  | Download PDF , focuses on the East African Community (EAC).

MOBILE MONEY TRANSFERS KENYA

Kenya is the regional and gloabl leader when it comes to money transfer as a result of the revoluonary product:M-Pesa.  

67% of the Kenyan  population received transfers via mobile money in 2011. 

M-Pesa

M-Pesa  is a mobile-phone based money transfer and microfinancing service for Safaricom and Vodacom, the largest mobile network operators in Kenya and Tanzania. Currently the most developed mobile payment system in the world, M-Pesa allows users with a national ID card or passport to deposit, withdraw, and transfer money easily with a mobile device.

YU Cash

YU (Essar) introduced YuCash a mobile phone money transfer service similar to Mpesa to offer money transfer service to its subscribers.

Currently, this company is working to grow its subscriber base.


Orange Money

Airtel Money Kenya

 Airtel Money Kenya, is a  comprehensive service enabling customers to access their money faster and more conveniently.  This product is reshaping the future of banking in Africa, the service is available to over 100 million people in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

MOBILE MONEY TRANSFERS UGANDA

Close to 10 million Ugandans use mobile money compared to about four million bank accounts. The maximum account balance allowed on mobile money is sh5m and the maximum daily transaction is sh4m.
Total mobile money transactions grew from sh3.8trillion to sh11.7trillion in 2012.

According to Bank of Uganda, daily mobile money transactions have hit Shs50 billion up from Shs30 billion.

MTN Mobile Money Transfers Uganda

MTN MobileMoney is a service that enables people to send and receive money anywhere in Uganda using their phones. The service operates by using an agent who is the intermediary between the parties in the transaction. 

Msente Mobile Money Transfer Uganda

Uganda Telecom M-Sente is a mobile wallet for a subscriber that offers a fast, secure and painless method for money transfer and bill payment.

MOBILE MONEY TRANSFERS TANZANIA

For the month of September 2012 alone, the value of mobile money transactions in Tanzania was about 14 percent of total deposits held by commercial banks. Truly, there is a mobile money revolution in Tanzania.

Tigo Pesa

Tigo Pesa is a product of Tigo, Tanzania's fastest growing mobile phone network. This company is a subsidiary of the Vodafone Group, and is the leading mobile network operator in Tanzania with a 37% market share. Vodacom also launched M-Pesa in Kenya.

Airtel Money Tanzania

Airtel money Tanzania is the service that allows Tanzanians to manage their money directly from their mobile phone wherever they are at  time. 

Zantel Z-Pesa

Zantel Z-pesa allows customers to send and receive money and purchase air time. Also, customers are able to pay their utility bills and other services to subscribed business and companies.

MOBILE MONEY TRANSFERS RWANDA

The country has over 1.2 million registered users of mobile money (11.5% of the population) with nearly 800,000 transactions alone in October 2012.  However, it is still small compared to the markets in other East African countries, particularly Kenya, where 67% of the population received transfers via mobile money in 2011. - See more at: http://www.theigc.org/publications/working-paper/regulation-mobile-money-rwanda#sthash.lcupqSgE.dpuf

 This country has over 1.2 million registered users of mobile money (11.5% of the population) with nearly 800,000 transactions alone in October 2012.  However, it is still small compared to the markets in other East African countries, particularly Kenya. 

MTN mobile money transfer Rwanda

Airtel Mobile Money Transfer Rwanda

Mobile money has become part of people's everyday lives because they don't need to carry cash. Even those who were formally unbanked have mobile money accounts with a service provider of their choice because it's cheap.