According to a new market research report, the Mobile Money market is expected to grow from $12.34 Billion in 2014 to $78.02 Billion by 2019, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 44.6% in next four years. The proliferation of smart devices and the widespread availability of mobile data coverage in many regions is pushing the adoption of mobile financial services, especially among regions with larger unbanked populations where Mobile Money services are proving to become a great financial system alternative. In other regions, technologies such as Near Field Communication (NFC), which is already being provided as a built-in feature among newer devices, and also the increasing level of security provided by service providers across their payment platforms and applications is pushing more people to adopt mobile financial services such as mobile wallet services.
Mobile Money services provided by MNOs, banks, and payment processing agents prominently include the usage of mobile phones for a wide range of payments including to transfer electronic money, send and receive international remittances, send and receive money from one mobile device to another, deposit and withdraw money, book travel or movie tickets, make bill payments, pay utility bills, make airtime transfers, and recharge top-ups among various others.
According to the report, Mobile Money services are still accessed through Short Messaging Service (SMS) by users. Mobile subscribers also widely leverage the usage of mobile money solutions via direct mobile billing, mobile web/ Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) payments and SIM ToolKit (STK)/ Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD). The report highlighted that the major vendors of the global Mobile Money Market are Vodafone Group, Gemalto, MasterCard, Orange and Mahindra Comviva.
