By Eugene Davis
Telecommunication giants MTN, operators of mobile money services expect to maintain its resurgence and 20percent growth rate for the end of calender 2023, Head of Products and Services, Mobile Money Limited Sylvia Otuo Acheampong has disclosed.
Bank of Ghana data revealed that in the first half of 2023, the total mobile money transactions reached ¢859 billion, a significant increase from ¢480 billion recorded during the same period in the previous year.
According to the Head of Products and Services, Mobile Money Limited Sylvia Otuo Acheampong, “As at half year we were around 14m active mobile money customers, we have almost 150,000merchants that actively accept mobile money and we have roughly around 280,000 agents that are actively transacting -so in terms of the growth we are there,
Our projections -these activities give us confidence that we will get there, the whole activity is not to share the numbers for financial reason because we have stakeholders and investors but it is also to let all of us sort of celebrate the success, we making in the FinTech space, we are happy with the half year, we have made significant growth in the mobile money space, we have grown year on year around 20percent growth and it is good for the business.
Ending the year, we are supposed to be in the twenties (20’s) in terms of percentage growth but what tends to happen is the sustainability because we have done well but sustaining it is the challenge.” she told Business24 in an interview at this year’s MTN MoMo Stakeholders Forum in Accra.
Further, Mrs. Otuo Acheampong also hinted that the company will consider a reduction in service fees to attract more users and promote digital payments adoption in Ghana.
“We actually have not changed our pricing for a very long time but we know it has to be reduced because the demand is high.We were discussing our strategy for next year, and one thing that kept coming through was reviewing our pricing.”
She also touched on the electronic levy act adding that they will keep engaging government to explore other ways to reduce costs.
For her , cost is a barrier because nobody wants to incur cost for doing something that should become a lifestyle, and she noted that when e-levy was introduced, there was a significant drop in their revenues and when it was reduced it witnessed a corresponding uplift, which shows that customers are sensitive to pricing; “we have to find a way, we also very cognizant of what the government is trying to do, which ultimately is getting every tax payer to pay taxes.”
“We feel there could be other innovative ways of getting taxes out of merchants and partners without necessarily burdening the consumer, and that is the kind of discussion that we want to engage with the government. we cannot put a percentage to it, but I can tell you from the figures shared, lots of agencies and institutions within the telco area have shared a lot of data around the effect of e-levy, so we will keep on engaging, we also have to work very closely with government in terms of what the other alternatives are that we can bring together to reduce cost on customers.”she noted.
Although there was a slight dip in April 2023 to ¢138.8 billion, the sector quickly regained momentum, soaring to ¢159.7 billion in May 2023 and reaching ¢149.4 billion in June 2023.
This impressive surge in transactions is noteworthy, considering the introduction of the 1% Electronic Transaction Levy (E-Levy) in May 2022, which was later reduced to 1.0% on January 11, 2023.
