text: The global pandemic has accelerated the need for mobile and digital technology on the African continent - TECH dot AFRICA
  Home Press Release The global pandemic has accelerated the need for mobile and digital technology...
  The global pandemic has accelerated the need for mobile and digital technology on the African continent
  The GSMA Inclusive Tech Lab which was launched in 2019 has launched an interoperability Test Platform to help the mobile money industry shift to a higher gear, where customers can pay merchants and transfer money without having to consider which mobile money provider they are using. More so, end-to-end interoperability may provide more people with access to financial services and enable new services to address the needs of the most underserved user groups.
  Max Cuvellier, Head of Mobile for Development, GSMA highlights: "To truly transform the financial lives of all citizens, mobile money must become a primary monetisation mechanism, universally available across a greater range of digital transactions. By making mobile money more central to the financial lives of users, greater financial inclusion, economic empowerment and economic growth can be achieved."
  For over a decade, mobile money has been driving financial inclusion, opening access to digital transactions and giving people the tools to better manage their financial lives. Today, there are more than a billion registered mobile money accounts globally, spread across 290 mobile money deployments that are live in 95 countries. In Africa over 50.7 million new registered mobile money accounts were opened in 2019-20 alone, taking the total number of registered accounts in the region to 481 million. The total transaction volume and value for mobile money accounts during this period was 24 billion and $461 billion (up by 20% and 27%) respectively.