The number of registered Mobile Money (MM) customers across the networks increased by 8.4 percent, from 21.6 million as at December 2016 to 23.4 million as at December 2017, the Bank of Uganda (BoU) Annual Supervision Report for 2017 released recently has revealed.
The report obtained by Business Focus indicates that as at end of December 2017, there were seven mobile money service providers and these included; MTN, Airtel, Uganda Telecom, Africell, M-Cash, EzeeMoney and Micropay.
“Mobile money activity continued its growth, during 2017. Transaction values increased by 44.0 percent to USh63.1 trillion in 2017, up from USh43.8 trillion recorded in 2016. The number of transactions rose by 23.8 percent over the same period,” the report reveals.
The number of transactions grew from 974,746 in 2016 to 1,206,845 in 2017.
The report further reveals how MM has grown over the last seven years. The number of MM customers has grown from 2.8m in 2011 to 23.4m in 2017.
The value of money transacted via this platform has also grown from Shs3.75 trillion to Shs63.1 trillion in 2017.
The number of transactions has also increased from 87,481 in 2011 to 1,206,845 in 2017.
The report however points to challenges facing MM service providers.
“There were incidents of operational risk in mobile money payments, with several fraud cases reported, some of which were perpetrated by staff of the Mobile Money network operators. Therefore, this calls for proper internal controls at the MNOs to mitigate internally perpetuated fraud,” the report says.
However, MM growth is likely to reduce with the increase of excise duty from 10% to 15% on fees charged on money transfer and withdraw services by operators licensed to provide communications or money transfers with exception of services provided by banks.
In addition, there is levy of 1% on of the value of transactions from receiving and withdrawing money.
