Strategy for mobile-wallet partnership opportunities in Africa
Africa’s growing and youthful population is increasingly digitally engaged. It owns mobile phones and financial accounts, and seeks to make payments electronically for a wider range of goods and services.
The payments market has become increasingly competitive through the introduction of digital channels and solutions where new players have entered the market to fill consumers’ unmet needs.
Mobile-money operators have already filled some of these needs by providing the opportunities for people to transact with other methods besides cash through digital solutions like MPesa. However, there is still a significant opportunity for card associations and mobile-money operators to form partnerships to fill the gaps in the market by offering digital financial products that reduce challenges and pain points that customers face on a daily basis.
Genesis Analytics was commissioned by a global card association to conduct a mobile-wallet partnership opportunity assessment across five countries (Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Madagascar, Mauritius and Senegal). This entailed assessing and mapping the payment landscape in each country and identifying key payment opportunities in the mobile money, card and digital payments space.
The study involved conducting desktop and primary research across the five countries. Each country study was split into three sections: external environment analysis, demand-side analysis and supply-side analysis.
The external environment section analysed the macroeconomic environment, social-demographic factors, technological influences, and legal and regulatory frameworks in each country and how each aspect influenced the payments landscape.
The supply-side section involved understanding who the main wallet providers were, volumes and value of all payment instruments (ATM, card, POS, mobile money, EFT, RTGS, cheques and others), the market landscape for banks and MFIs, and key value propositions of mobile wallet providers and other DFS operators.
The demand-side involved understanding how businesses and retail consumers in each market made and received payments, their pain points and challenges, the demand for digital credit and their demand for additional financial products. Genesis surveyed over 150 businesses and 150 retail customers in each market. The following payment flows in each market were also calculated and mapped:
- Person to Person (P2P)
- Person to Business (P2B)
- Person to Government (P2G)
- Government to Person (G2P)
- Business to Business (B2B)
- Business to Person (B2P)
The overall study provided recommendations for deepening and developing products that would adequately serve the market and inform the card association’s partnership strategy.