From access to engagement – where next for mobile money?

It’s hard to think of a more impactful tech for citizens of developing nations than mobile money. New research from trade body GSMA proves it. Its 2026 State of the Industry Report revealed that more than $2.1 trillion flowed through mobile money accounts last year. User numbers went up too. There were 2.3 billion registered accounts in 2025, up 268 million on 2024.

But the numbers don’t tell the human story – that mobile money has brought financial inclusion and economic opportunity to millions of people. As Vivek Badrinath, GSMA Director General, says: “What began as a simple way to move money has evolved into a global financial ecosystem, reshaping how hundreds of millions of people manage their financial lives.” 

The movement started in 2007, when Kenyan operator Safaricom launched M-PESA. The SMS-based money transfer service lets users deposit cash with an agent who loads credit to the account holder’s phone. They can then send money via SMS or USSD to another M-PESA user – or withdraw cash via another agent.

Today, almost 190 million adults rely on mobile money as their only formal financial account. Still, there are plenty of challenges such as:

• Tackling fraud and scams
• Reducing cost and regulatory constraints in some markets
• Moving to a wallet-based UX
• Making mobile money part of a wider digital infrastructure.

Mobile money in 2026: a global story

GSMA’s State of the Industry Report confirms Sub-Saharan Africa as the centre of gravity for adoption and usage. The region accounted for more than two-thirds of growth in 2025 and generated approximately $1.4 trillion in transaction value - the largest share worldwide. 

But other regions are closing the gap. GSMA identified 347 mobile money services in operation in 2025. South Asia and East Asia-Pacific are accelerating rapidly, with hundreds of millions of registered accounts transacting half a trillion dollars across 2025. 

For all this growth, there is still a gap between account ownership and regular usage. Of 2.3 billion registered accounts, only 593 million are active on a monthly basis, reflecting the challenge of converting access into sustained engagement. Stakeholders must address this issue if they want to keep improving financial inclusion.

Loans? Savings? Insurance? Beyond P2P payments

The original driver of mobile money was the simple P2P transaction. People found they could move money without using cash. They could avoid long journeys – and limit the threat of robbery or embezzlement. 

As usage spread, the potential to add more service features became obvious. The new applications included:

• Bill payments
• Making payments to businesses
• Receiving payments from government programs
• Micro-loans
• Micro-savings
• Insurance

GSMA’s report reveals rapid growth across all these areas. Merchant payments hit $155 billion in 2025, while mobile money users spent almost $100 billion on bill payments. 26 countries offered 282 mobile‑enabled microinsurance products and six services added a savings product to their portfolios. This led to a 31 percent rise in the number of customers transferring funds between September 2024 and June 2025.

Barriers to use: the trust challenge

All forms of payment rely on trust. Systems only flourish when the payer can be confident about the identity of the payee – and vice versa.

Regrettably, the rise of digital payment (where the parties cannot necessarily see each other) has enabled fraudsters to impersonate genuine account holders. The success of mobile money services has led to a range of scams, which are undermining trust. The techniques include:

Spoofing customer care

Scammers call customers and direct them to an agent. They deceive the agent into making unauthorised transactions

Fake messages

Fraudsters send a message claiming they mistakenly sent money to the account. The user refunds the funds without verifying. But no money was ever deposited

USSD fraud

Fraudsters ask customers to send money via USSD 

ATM fraud

Scammers manipulate users into authorising an ATM withdrawal from their accounts.

SIM Swap

The fraudster poses as a customer care agent and phishes for the information they need to do a SIM swap – PIN, last few transactions etc.

Stakeholders recognise the urgent need to combat thesescams. Fraud creates financial losses. It can also undermine trust, which discourages regular usage and slows the transition from account ownership to active participation.

Another dimension of the trust challenge lies with regulation. Across the world, govenments have passed laws that compel providers to bolster defences and protect consumers from the misuse of their data. 

The result is onerous for providers. They have to abide by rules across multiple domains (payment services, e-money, data protection, digital ID, open banking, money laundering), and they frequently face different requirements across different regions.

Overall, as mobile money matures, trust will become a critical success factor. This will intensify as the market migrates to a future based on wallets (see below). Providers recognise this. They are now building ‘invisible’ trust infrastructures to boost user confidence.

Changing journeys: From SMS to mobile wallets

The roll out of 4G and the spread of smartphone ownership is changing the nature of mobile money. Providers and customers are moving on from a simple SMS/USSD experience to journeys based on apps and wallets using contactless NFC and QR codes.

Safaricom is a good example. In 2021, it launched its M-PESA Super App. It includes Mini-Apps that make it easy for users to buy event tickets, gift vouchers, transport passes, insurance services and more. There’s even an offline mode so that customers can use the Super App to complete transactions when not connected.

 Other service providers are integrating their mobile money services with third party wallet and payment products. For instance, GCash users in the Philippines can now link their wallets directly to Google Pay. 

The move to wallets is heightening the trust challenge. To boost defences, providers are building new layers of security. Crucially, they are invisible to consumers. They might only experience a seamless tap, but behind every interaction sits a combination of technologies designed to protect users and their transactions. They include:

• Host card emulation (HCE), which provides a virtual representation of a payment card as software.
• Tokenisation, which protects sensitive card data by replacing it with a unique string of characters or numbers.
• Authentication methods to protect against unauthorised access. Techniques include biometric passcodes, PINs etc.

The role of mobile money in digital public infrastructure

In many developing nations, governments are building out digital public infrastructure (DPI) to achieve digital transformation at scale. DPI comprises the building blocks that sit between physical infrastructure (fibre, devices, servers, data centres etc) and user applications. DPI comprises data sharing systems, digital payments platforms and digital identity/e-signatures.

As DPI builds out, the question for mobile money service providers is: how do we fit our products seamlessly into this new infrastructure? Priorities include:

• Embedding security-by-design into wallet architectures
• Ensuring privacy-by-design principles across services
• Building in strong authentication and identity protection
• Making platforms and devices interoperable
• Designing consistent and seamless user experiences.

The next step: from inclusion to participation

In the first 25 years of the century, mobile money delivered spectacular gains in financial inclusion. It solved access. The next challenge is engagement. This next phase will be defined by:

• How much users embrace new mobile financial products
• How often they use them
• How they integrate these services into their daily digital lives

And perhaps the most important factor will be trust. Engagement ultimately depends on seamless digital experiences powered by robust security.

The transition to digital wallets – powered by invisible layers of secure infrastructure – should accelerate adoption. If service providers can offer frictionless experiences and meet the trust challenge, they will improve lives and unleash waves of innovation across the developing world.