The Bank of Ghana has indicated that, the total value of mobile money transactions done in the first quarter of this year, reached GH₵52 billion.
Which is more than 68 percent growth over the figure recorded in the same period last year.
Contrasting last year’s transactions to this year, the Bank of Ghana said, the first quarter of last year’s mobile money transactions valued GH₵31 billion while the total volume of transactions reached GH₵198.2 million.
However, within the first three months of this year, the volume of transactions climbed to GH₵312.9 million.
The figures contained in the 2018 first quarter payment system statistics revealed that as at March 31, 2018, there were more than 11.24 million active mobile money accounts out of the over 25 million registered accounts.
However, in terms of the total amount of money contained in the wallets of accounts holders, the period under review recorded in excess of GH₵2.2 billion, which is a 49.3 percent increase over that of Q1 of 2017.
The uptake in mobile money usage comes at a time when the controversy over whether the service should be taxed in gaining momentum.
The numbers point to a booming business for mobile telecom operations, even though consumers complain the service charges are a rip-off.
Mobile money accounted for 15 percent of the total revenue recorded by MTN in the first quarter of this year.
MTN, operated by Scancom Ghana Limited, currently has the lion’s share of the mobile money market, as it boasts of more than 7 million of the 11 million active mobile money users.
Report by: Stephanie Horsu
