The mobile money revolution arrives from Africa

Every day, 33 million mobile money transactions take place in 93 countries and through 271 services. Mobile money already doubles the Paypal transactions processed worldwide. There are already 411 million mobile money accounts registered worldwide. And these are figures from December 2015. Sub-Saharan Africa is the region in the world with the largest deployment of this technology. By a long way. In Kenya alone, 40,000 businesses accept mobile payments face to face and 3,000 organisations do so remotely.

All this data was heard this morning in Casa África from Topyster Muga, director of Airtel Money in Kenya and IT Woman of the year in sub-Saharan Africa. She was participating in the Second International Meeting of Women Entrepreneurs Gran Canaria, 2016 Summit, which began today in the organisation’s auditorium and this afternoon moved to Incube (Infecar). The meeting is an initiative of the San Francisco International Women Entrepreneurs Forum (SFIWEF) which runs for two days in Gran Canaria with the support of the Cabildo de Gran Canaria, through the Society for the Economic Promotion of Gran Canaria (SPEGC), the Canary Islands Special Zone (ZEC), ICEX (Spain Export and Investments), Casa África, Incube, SportPesa, Teamlabs, Heroikka, Consensus Advokat and KenTech.

“Nine years ago, in Kenya, a quiet revolution happened: mobile money was adopted, a technological innovation which we’re now starting to hear about in Europe and the United States”, explained Nadejda Georgieva Bozukova in the auditorium of Casa África, in the session prior to Topyster Muga’s talk. Bozukova is the country manager in Spain for the firm KenTech, based in Gran Canaria and specialising in software and platform development, especially for East Africa, where, among other things, the company works in the sector of sports betting by mobile phone.

“We can pay with our smartphones, but payments by mobile are usually linked to an internet connection, a bank card or a bank account; in Kenya, you don’t need anything like that”, continued the head of KenTech. “This is turning this country in East Africa into a giant laboratory defining the future of money.” A future that Topyster Muga defined as an “economy truly without money”.