Accra, Ghana//-MobileMoney Fintech LTD (MMFL), the independent financial technology (fintech) subsidiary responsible for MTN Ghana’s Mobile Money (MoMo) business, has revealed that it sees a huge opportunity in deepening usage of mobile money both locally and globally.
The Chief Executive Officer of MMFL, Shaibu Haruna, who revealed this at the MMFL Media Development Series in Accra, explained that globally they have seen the mobile money ecosystem growing astronomically.
Recent data trends
He quoted the State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money 2026 released by the GSMA, a global organisation unifying the mobile ecosystem to discover, develop and deliver innovation foundational to positive business environments and societal change, that there were “$2 trillion in mobile money transactions worldwide in 2025”, according to the 2026 GSMA report.
Mr Haruna also added that in 2025, the mobile money industry recorded 2.3 billion registered accounts and 593 million active 30 day accounts, lifting the global monthly activity rate to 25.7%.
It is clear that, the value is scaling faster than volume as use deepens. More than $2.1 trillion flowed through mobile money in 2025 – doubling from the first trillion in just four years, with average transaction values rising as value growth outpaced volume growth, the CEO and the report collaborated.
Mr Haruna further noted: “The number of mobile money accounts globally has also seen quite significant growth. There is a gap when it comes to active usage of mobile money. While there are 2.3 billion accounts, only about 600 million of them are active. It tells you that there is opportunity for us to deepen the usage of mobile money globally”.
He was quick to add that Ghana’s mobile money statistics followed a similar pattern. We have a lot of active accounts created but when you look at the active usage measured on the 30-day cycle, you see that problem, the MMFL boss noted.
Why cash is still the King
“On the 90-day cycle, which is usually what the Bank of Ghana (BoG) projects, you will also see it reflected there. So, there is opportunity for active usage of the service, and that is why cash is still King in most of the markets across the world. It is because mobile money is not actively used every single day for every single transaction, and there is an opportunity to drive that access”.
Where is the mobile money growth coming from
The MMFL CEO indicated that the players in the industry have seen double-digit growth in terms of account adoption and usage in 2025. While in almost every region of the world is seeing growth in mobile money adoption, particularly for Sub-Saharan Africa region.
We’ve seen a lot more acceleration happening, and increasingly we have a lot of governments using mobile financial services as well, Mr Haruna told the journalists on Friday, 9, October 2026.
Through the ecosystem, the governments, including Ghana, are using it to enhance digital payments asd also using them for emergency payments, among others.
They are new products that are beginning to shoot up in most of the markets across the world. And digital lending is one of such key areas. It speaks to the gap in terms of access to finance in Africa for both at the individual level and micro-businesses.
The power of the adoption of mobile money is that it enables us to be able to aggregate customer data, and be able to now score customers digitally, understanding the customer transaction pattern, and user behaviour and using them as bases for scoring, which hitherto wasn’t possible because of the cash transaction which was heavily used by customers.
Leadership position
The CEO of the Digital Chamber, Madam Sylvia Ankomah, observed that Ghana has been in the mobile money leadership position when you look at the GSMA reports, acknowledging that for the last two years (2024 and 2025) Ghana has had the leading place when it comes to best practice for mobile financial services.
“However, if you look at what is happening across the continent and, more importantly, across the world, we are not yet scratching the surface.
The roadmap of where digital finance services is going, especially on the back of AI, is quite evolutionary. It will change the course of financial inclusion”, she stated.
Even though Ghana made significant progress, the country is nowhere near having achieved that progress. Today, mobile money operators in the country namely MMFL, AT Money and Telecell Cash do cash-out, cash-in as typically services.
However, there is an opportunity where every person who is unbanked now becomes banked. Whereas everyday people have insurance policies, how do we democratise services such as insurance, pensions, and savings? So, there is a lot this particular ecosystem offers the people as a country.
