Grapevine

Telcos face $1bn fraud threat amid mobile money boom – GSMA

Telcos have admitted to struggling to grow their core business due to the high costs associated with deploying network technologies and slow growth in average revenue per consumer. As a result, operators in recent years are shifting focus to mobile financial services as the next phase of their growth.

Kenya’s Safaricom, which launched M-Pesa in 2007, announced in its financial year 2023 that its mobile money unit revenue grew by 8.8 per cent year-on-year to KSh 117.19bn.

MTN’s MoMo, which launched in 2012, secured a $200m investment from Mastercard earlier this year, boosting its valuation to $5.2bn. Similarly, Airtel is considering a public listing for its mobile money business, SmartCash.

According to GSMA, there were over 1.6 billion registered mobile money accounts, with 400 million created during the COVID-19 pandemic.