Revenue generated by MTN Ghana's mobile money exceeds that of the biggest banks in Nigeria report says.
According to the report, MTN Ghana generated $216.4 million in revenue from MoMo transactions in 2020 compared to FBN ($141.2m), Access Bank ($136.8m), UBA ($130.2m) and Zenith Bank ($116.1m). The above figure for MTN Ghana suggests that they are performing well than their Nigerian counterpart - MTN Nigeria ($112.7m).
MTN Ghana's numbers illustrate that the company is among the big winners of the pandemic as most transactions were done through the network. The implication of the growth in this mode of transaction trend is a fall in the use of cheques for transactions in Ghana.
According to the report, MoMo transactions surpassed cheques by $40 billion in the first quarter of 2021. In a bid not to be irrelevant in the future, Ghanaian Banks has responded by entering into several partnerships.
CBDCs are making waves currently. The Central Bank of Nigeria recently stated that it would be launching theirs before the end of the year. Ghana is not left out in the race for a CBDC. According to the report, Ghana is edging towards a state-backed digital currency to mitigate against the volatility of unregulated digital currencies, such as bitcoin.
Ghana is not the only country where the popularity of MoMo transactions is on the rise. Kenya is also experiencing a surge in mobile money transactions.
According to the report, the value of M-Pesa transactions grew by 32.9% year-on-year to $82 billion in 2020, whilst the volume of M-Pesa transactions grew by 14.9%, to 5.12 billion transactions. Orange's MoMo service also saw an 18.9% increase in active users to a total of 19.6 million customers by the end of June 2020.
Kenya and Ghana rank among the highest when it comes to MoMo payments rate as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product. The figure stands at 87% for Kenya, while for Ghana, the figure stands at 82%. These are the highest in the world after China, where mobile transfers represent 125% of GDP, the report stated.
Nigeria in focus
GDP: $432.294 billion in 2020 compared to Ghana's $72.354 in 2020
Population: 206,139,587 in 2020 compared to Ghana's 31,072,945 in 2020
GDP per capita: $2,097 in 2020 compared to Ghana's $2,328 in 2020
