For the first time mobile money transactions crossed the one billion mark. With this, they surpassed the shs954 million recorded in the 2020 third quarter that has been the highest.
This information was released in the Uganda Communications Commission Market Performance report for the fourth quarter that ended December 2020.
This performance translates into 15 transactions monthly per every active mobile money account according to UCC. These included among others agent-assisted deposits, mobile money-bank transfers, mobile betting and merchant payments.
In this order agents stayed the sole most vital point of linkage in the last mile mobile money value chain. These accounted for more than 25% of total mobile money transactions in the period between October and December 2020.
Further statistics showed that of the 270 million transactions assisted by agents, deposits accounted for 170 million and withdrawals 100 million only.
Irregularity between withdrawals and deposits was another key issue highlighted by the report. This can be attributed to growing business-to-business applications, increasing mobile money to bank applications. Behavioral changes in light of the mobile money withdrawal tax is another factor.
Mobile money penetration also surged following record net quarterly new mobile money accounts – 1.8 million – that were registered in the third quarter of 2020.
The fourth quarter however posted a low performance with only 325,000 new mobile money accounts. This accounted into a national mobile money account total of 28 million from 27.7 million as at the end of September 2020. This translated into a penetration of 66 per cent.
The report further reported that there was an 80 per cent active ratio during this period. This meant that four in every five mobile money accounts carried out atleast one transaction in the past 90 days.
22.5 million accounts out of the 28 million national tally were registered to be active while only 88,000 of the newly registered 325,000 mobile accounts were active during this period.
