A few weeks back (April 10, 2013) to be preciser, Businessday ran a cover that suggest Mobile Money was slow on getting traction in Nigeria. This has now prompted a response from Tayo Oviosu , founder and CEO of PAGA who replied on page 1o of Businessday 22/4/2013 releasing interesting numbers about PAGA.
According to him In 2012, “we (Paga) went from 40,363 users to 383,063 users – 847% growth (faster than M-Pesa) in its first full year of operations). In 2012, Paga processed over 918,000 transactions worth N9.8billion. 2013 is already off to a fast start for Paga -by the end of March 2013, Paga has processed over 672,000 transactions worth over N8billion”.
The above response from Tayo is quite instructive. In 2011 the CBN reported volume and value of mobile money transactions in Nigeria at 1.9million and N20.5billion. CBN 2012 report is not due till May/June 2013 however, based on the most recent date Paga already has almost 50% of the market share. Stanbic Bank recently claimed the value of its mobile money transactions was about N5.6billion.
Mobile money had been growing astronomically in Nigeria increasing from N100m in 2008 t0 N20.8billion in 2011 a CAGR of 133%!!!! In fact mobile money was just N6.7billion in 2010. Strangely too, according to that same report the whilst the volume of transactions have decreased the value has gone up.Whilst the things could indeed have been better it is important to note that the adoption of mobile payment platforms and indeed tech based financial services platform border a lot on trust, trend and customer satisfaction. That is why the increasing popularity of online shopping and transactions in Nigeria is an integral factor that will affect the success of mobile money.
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