According to GSMA’s State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money 2025, 2 billion people now hold mobile money accounts, indicating a massive global rise in account holders, as this figure doubled in a 5-year period. The first time over 500 million monthly active users were recorded in 2023. These users completed a staggering 108 billion transactions valued at $1.68 trillion in the year 2024.
Sub-Saharan Africa drives most of this activity. The region accounts for 1.1 billion registered accounts — more than half the global total — and handled 81.8 billion transactions last year. East Africa leads with $649 billion processed across 459 million accounts. Mobile wallets there have replaced cash for rent payments, school fees, grocery runs, and even placing bets on https://1xbet.tz/en/line. The technology has woven itself into daily routines that once required physical cash or bank visits.
How Account Ownership Shifted Since 2014
Ten years ago, merely 34% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s total adult population had a financial account of any type. By 2024, this figure will reach 58%. This massive increase is definitely due to the adoption of mobile money in the whole region, and hardly any of it is due to the expansion of branches in the region.
Other areas also experienced an upturn. East Asia and the Pacific region increased from 69% to 86%. Latin America increased from 51% to 70%. The Middle East and North Africa, which are slower to adjust, increased from 43% to 53%. In the World Bank’s Global Findex Database 2025, all developing economies combined account for 77% ownership, an increase from 54% ten years ago.
The West African Economic and Monetary Union illustrates this perfectly. From 2018 to 2022, the region added more than 110 million accounts. The population’s financial inclusion increased from 56% to 71%. This population is made up of 60% rural people who do not have bank branches near them.
Credit, Savings, and Insurance Through a Phone
Services have evolved from simply sending money to family members. By June 2024, almost 50% of mobile money providers will have introduced credit products, a 73% increase from the previous year. Approximately a third of them now offer savings accounts, and 28% provide insurance.
These services help people who would not use regular banking services. Small businesses that lack collateral can get microloans based on their transaction histories. Farmers get payments for their crops directly on their phones and can use that same account to buy seeds and fertiliser on credit.
Mobile savings have been adopted especially by women. The GSMA tracked women customers saving through mobile wallets and found an increase of 98% from September 2022 to June 2023. In many of the countries surveyed, women used mobile savings accounts 2 to 4 times more than traditional bank savings accounts. The reasons for this preference differ and may include greater convenience, the ability to remain private (anonymity), and the absence of minimum balance restrictions. Regardless of the reasons, this tendency has been observed in numerous countries.
Economic Weight
Mobile money has now grown to become more than a convenience. Money now moves entire economies. According to GSMA, countries with mobile money services have a combined GDP of $720 billion more than they would have without these services.
Mobile money alone has added $190 billion to the GDP of Sub-Saharan Africa. Some individual areas have even shown greater impacts. Without mobile money, projected GDP would be 5.9% and 4.1% more for East and West Africa, respectively.
The transaction mix explains part of this impact:
- Merchant payments: $105 billion globally in 2024
- Bill payments: $93 billion
- Bulk disbursements (salaries, social transfers): $97 billion
- Cross-border remittances: $34 billion
Behind these numbers sits a network of 28 million registered agents — up 20% from 2023. About 10 million stay active monthly, serving as human touchpoints where users convert cash to digital funds and back. There are now 755 agents per 100,000 adults in mobile money markets, double the density from 2021. This infrastructure supports everything from salary deposits to entertainment spending, including sports fans checking odds and placing wagers through https://1xbet.tz/en/line.
Gaps That Persist
The expansion of this industry hasn’t been uniform, with more than 55% of the 12 countries GSMA surveyed still showing a gap in mobile money ownership among men and women that shows no signs of shifting for the better since 2023. Women cite the following as barriers the most: not owning a phone, not having the adhered ID documents, and just not knowing a service exists.
Both Regulatory hurdles are of concern. The taxation of mobile money transfers are especially impacting the adoption of these services in various regions. When the costs of these services increase, people reduce the volume of transactions, and this is the scenario that is forcing many countries to change their minds and reduce the rates.
Regardless, 60% of providers have implemented financial literacy programs aimed at addressing these gaps. Currently, the industry handles 3.2 million transactions every minute. For the 1.3 billion adults who still do not have a financial account, the expanding ecosystem of mobile devices, agents, and digital wallets provides the most feasible opportunity for financial inclusion.