Recent data released by the Bank of Ghana on Friday; September 25, 2020 shows that the total value of mobile transactions have seen an unprecedented increase over the past one year.
The total value of mobile transactions as at the end of August 2020, stood at GHS56.0 billion, having increased from GHS26.1 billion in August 2019.
This means that in just one year, that is between August 2019 and August 2020, total value of mobile transactions has increased by approximately GHS30 billion, representing 115 percentage points increment.
The Bank of Ghana in its 2017 Payment System Annual Report attributed the continuous growth in mobile money to productive collaborations between mobile money operators and banks as well as expansion in agent network and introduction of innovative products.
On month-on-month basis, total value of mobile transactions increased from GHS52.5 billion in July 2020 to GHS56.0 billion as at the end of August the same year. This implies that, over the past one month, specifically in the month of August alone, the total value of mobile transactions increased by GHS3.5 billion representing a 7-percentage points monthly growth rate.
A critical examination of the current data also pointed out that over the past one year, that is between August 2019 and August 2020, the total number of registered mobile money accounts also increased marginally from 33.4 million to 34.5 million. This represents a year-on-year growth rate of 3.3 percent in the total number of registered mobile money accounts.
As at the end of December 2019, there were 32.5 million mobile accounts, however, the number of mobile money accounts had increased to 34.3 million as at the end of the first quarter of 2020.
The total amount of mobile money accounts does not tell the full story of the patronage of mobile money services in the country. To this end the Bank of Ghana in their data provided an additional information on the number of these accounts that are active.
The Bank of Ghana explained that “active mobile money accounts are the number of accounts which transacted at least once in the 90 days prior to reporting”. Based on the data, out of a total 34.5 million registered mobile money accounts as at the end of August 2020, 15.9 million of them were active.
This implies that 46% of the total number of registered mobile money accounts are active. This also shows that majority of registered mobile money accounts (18.6 million) representing 54% have not been active over the past three months prior to the reporting of the current data.
Conversely, the total number of registered agents have however declined over the past one year. The recent data shows that as at August 2019, there were a total of 390 thousand registered agents. This has declined to 376 thousand in August 2020, culminating into a 3.6 percentage points decline.
Of the 390 thousand registered agents in August 2019, 199 thousand of them were active, representing an active rate of 51 %. Out of the 376 thousand registered agents as at August 2020, 280 thousand were active, representing an active rate of 74.5 %.
This analyses reveals that even though the number of registered agents have declined over the past one, majority of the agents have become more active this year compared to last year.
