IIF Authors

Status: Will be live at 09/29/2021 14:58

FRT Episode 108: Mobile Money in Sub-Saharan Africa

FRT welcomes Megan Brown (FirstRand) and Brad Gillis (Standard Bank), discussing the growth and implications of Mobile Money across Sub-Saharan Africa. We discuss the issues posed in a recent IIF report, together with author Ben Hilgenstock.

The phenomenal growth of Mobile Money services has reshaped parts of the payments landscape and promoted opportunities for greater inclusion, though with some very different patterns across specific markets within Africa. Megan and Brad explain the nuances of local market conditions, including existing infrastructure and customer preferences, with key learnings for bank strategies. There is an important role for bank-FinTech partnerships, and we discuss some of the key challenges to overcome in this partnership model.

We also discuss some of the challenges in operating across borders and across sectoral boundaries, and the increasing emergence of major tech firms into payment services, with implications both for traditional financial services providers and the relatively new mobile money providers, and how payment services increasingly intersect with the protection or monetization of customers’ data.