Mozambique: Almost 95% of population has electronic money account

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Mozambique: Almost 95% of population has electronic money account

6:11 CAT | 28 Aug 2024

File photo: Lusa

Almost 95 out of every 100 adults in Mozambique have an account with an Electronic Money Institution (EMI), which operates via mobile phone, but only 30 have bank accounts, according to data from the central bank.

According to a report by the Bank of Mozambique, with data up to the end of June, 30.9 adults out of every 100 had an account with one of the 15 or so commercial banks operating in the country, with a greater predominance among men (41.5) than women (19.3).

At the end of 2023, this coverage (30.9) was identical, while in 2022 it was 30.6 and in 2021 30.4.

The same report states that out of every 100 Mozambican adults, 94.5 have an account with one of the three EMIs operating in Mozambique, compared to 93.2 at the end of 2023, 68.5 in 2022 and 67.2 in 2021.

At the end of June, the number of EMI accounts was higher than the number of men (105.8 accounts per hundred men), while 81.8 women per hundred had an account.

The number of EMI agents in Mozambique, which work through mobile telecoms operators, increased by another 12.2% in the first half of the year, to more than 252,000, covering all 154 districts of the country.

According to official figures, the total number of IME agents totalled 203,240 last September, a figure that grew to 224,704 by the end of December and 252,144 by the end of June.

All of the country’s districts have IME agents, from Maputo city in the south of the country, with 36,795, to Larde, Nampula province in the north, with 11.

On the other hand, of the country’s 154 districts, 33 still don’t have any branches of traditional banks, compared to 26 at the end of 2023.

Mozambique currently has three EMIs from the three mobile telecoms operators, which provide financial services via mobile phone, including money transfers between customers or payment for services.

This solution makes it easier and more widespread for the population to access financial services, using only mobile phones and EMI agents on the street.

In 2023, Mozambique’s EMIs beat the record for transfers, with more than 400 million transactions, according to data from the Bank of Mozambique.

The EMIs totalled 401,178,582 transfers last year – compared to 338.5 million operations in the whole of 2022 and 324.1 million in 2021 – handling more than 340.2 billion meticais (4,860 million euros).

Also according to the Bank of Mozambique, in 2021 the country had 11,412,194 EMI accounts and the following year 11,975,063.

In 2023, that number skyrocketed to 16,607,021, up to October alone, while the banks have almost 5.5 million accounts.

In the budget proposal for 2024, Mozambique’s government plans to continue with fiscal policy reforms to ‘increase the level of revenue collection’, namely by ‘taxing the commissions of electronic money agents and institutions’.

The mKesh Mobile Wallet, from state-owned operator Tmcel, was the first created in Mozambique in 2012, followed by Vodacom’s M-Pesa in 2013 and Movitel’s e-Mola the following year.

Source: Lusa