Kenya leads Nigeria, Others in Mobile Banking

• Kenya leads Nigeria, Others in Mobile Banking

Kenya has emerged Africa’s largest mobile banking leader in sub-Sharan Africa (SSA) following the publication of a survey conducted by EFG Hermes, an Egyptian investment bank.

According to the survey titled ‘Mobiles: Deepening financial inclusion, but at high cost’, 72 percent of Kenyan banking population used mobile phones to access their bank accounts and other mobile banking services in 2018.

This is three times more than the global average of 25 and represents the highest in sub-Saharan Africa.

Followed by Uganda’s 47 percent, while Tanzania recorded 37 percent.

Nigeria came last with only 8 percent of its population using mobile devices to access financial services in 2018.

While this means seven out of ten Kenyans are using mobile phones to access financial services, the cost of such service is still very high, according to the Egyptian bank.

“Whilst we are very encouraged by the depth of mobile banking across SSA countries, we believe that now is the time to focus on the costs and would encourage both the central banks and ICT regulators to review the cost of this financial inclusion,” EFG Hermes stated.

Growing mobile adoption in Africa is aiding financial technology and continues to deepen financial inclusion. EFG Hermes expects this to continue going forward.

The survey noted that Nigerians preferred NIBSS Instant Payments to mobile payments because of its low-cost framework.

The bank said: “With the development of NIPs (NIBSS Instant Payments), a shared agency network and low-cost framework, Nigerian banks should remain dominant in the retail payments space for the benefit of its low-income users. Its spirit of fair play and open competition is the difference and should be an example for the rest of SSA,” the report explained.

Despite the low cost, 36.8 percent of Nigerian adult population is still outside the financial system, this represents 36.6 million Nigerian adults.

Last week, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) said the number number of Nigerian mobile internet subscribers hit 119.5 million in April, while the total number of bank customers stood at 38 million. Suggesting that the number of Nigerians using the internet to access information are more than those using it to perform financial transactions.