Revenues from mobile money transfers is expected to reach $4 billion annually by 2018 from $2 billion revenues forecast for this year, said Juniper Research.

Africa is the leading mobile money market in the world. African mobile operators such as Vodacom Tanzania and MTN Uganda are generating more than 10 percent of their revenues from mobile money.

Safaricom MPESA service clocked mobile money revenues of more than $330 million in the latest financial year.

Drivers for the recent surges in both transaction volumes and values are increased deployment of both cross-border and intra-national remittance interoperability. Recent mobile money deals between Safaricom and MTN for the Rwanda-Kenya corridor and by national interoperability agreements in markets such as Tanzania and Pakistan are also boosting mobile money market, said Juniper Research.

Majority of telecom service providers are seeking to deploy smartphone applications in tandem with USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data)/IVR (Interactive Voice Response) mobile money solutions.

In many cases low adoption or activity rates could be attributed to poor decision making by service providers. In Nigeria, a number of services failed to gain repeat usage because of the high cash-out fees, while savings accounts in other markets had withdrawal fees that were inappropriate for low-income users/savers.

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