Basic mobile financial services are gaining traction. According to the GSMA 2015 State of the Industry: Mobile Money report, released to coincide with Mobile World Congress 2016, “Mobile money is reaching more than 411 million people globally. Moreover, it is available in 85% of countries where the vast majority of the population lacks access to a formal financial institution.” This should be encouraging news for all stakeholders in the mobile financial services ecosystem: banks, telcos, policy makers, technology players and philanthropic foundations alike.
Even though we’ve come this far, there’s still a long way to go to reach the next billion banked users. What’s needed is continuous innovation and investments. The first wave of fintech innovation saw the creation of smart services and partnerships responsible for the current mobile financial services ecosystem that handles around 33 million transactions a day.