Industry News

Vodafone Ghana has unveiled its Grow Western 2023 initiative, a comprehensive programme tailored to the Western Region. With this initiative, Vodafone hopes to incentivise customers, improve healthcare, increase tech knowledge, and foster community growth.

In the vast expanse of Africa, a silent revolution is taking place. The continent, which has long been characterized by its large unbanked population, is witnessing a paradigm shift in the realm of financial inclusion. The future of mobile money, an innovative and transformative technology, is unfolding at an unprecedented pace, tapping into Africa’s unbanked population and fostering a new era of financial inclusion.

Huawei upped its support of non-terrestrial communications in its mobile devices, revealing its forthcoming Mate 60 Pro device was capable of making calls over satellite infrastructure.

The MTN Ghana Foundation has selected 68 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as the first batch of beneficiaries for its five-year Enterprise Support Programme.

Minister of Communications and Digitalization, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful has announced that Ghana will not be auctioning 5G spectrum but will rather establish a “neutral shared infrastructure company” to deliver nationwide 4G and 5G services.

Exclusive data available to Techfocus24 indicates that Mobile Money Limited (MTN MoMo) now controls a whopping 89.3% of the mobile financial service (MFS) revenue in Ghana, while the first non-telco mobile money platform, Zeepay has now unseated Vodafone Cash from the number two position by revenue.

In 2022, MTN MoMo reported that its revenue took a hit due to the implementation of e-levy in May of that year. But the platform still recorded some 11.6% growth year-on-year to reach GHS1.9 billion. It also contributed some 19.6% to MTN Ghana’s total service revenue.

Meanwhile, Zeepay, at their recent annual general meeting (AGM) also reported that total revenue for the year was a little over GHS120.4 million, comprising of GHS106 million+ service revenue and GHS14.4 million as other incomes.

Per industry market share diagrams seen by Techfocus24, Vodafone Cash made approximately GHS5.5 million a month while AT Money made GHS3.5 million. For the year under review, therefore, Vodafone Cash’s revenue comes to about GHS66 million, while that of AT Money comes to GHS42 million.

Going by those figures, out of a total of about GHS2.13 billion reported MFS revenue for the year, Zeepay’s GHS120.4 million comes to 5.7% revenue share, while Vodafone Cash controls about 3% of revenue, and AT Money retained the remaining 1.97%, leaving G-Money and GhanaPay with virtually nothing.

However, on the subscriber side of things, MTN MoMo, with over 13 million mobile money customers, controls an estimated 73% of the market, while Vodafone Cash has 23%, AirtelTigo Money – 3% and the remaining 1% of customers is jointly held by Zeepay, G-Money and GhanaPay.

As the figures would show, even though Zeepay, currently number one Ghana Club100, has a marginal market share in terms of subscriptions, it raked in a relatively significant chunk of the revenue through innovation over the period in question. Zeepay’s main stay has been remittances, both local and foreign

The innovation Zeepay brings to the market is mainly the direct-to-mobile-wallet termination of foreign remittances. It has built its own rails, which power the termination of foreign remittances from over 200 countries directly into all mobile money wallets in Ghana, as well as in parts of Africa, the Caribbean and even Europe.

Another phase of that innovation is outbound remittances from about six African countries to all 200 other destinations around the world, as Zeepay seeks to create a borderless Africa in terms of payments, to support the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) initiative. Outbound is yet to go live in Ghana, though.

Zeepay’s AGM Numbers

Per Zeepay’s AGM, total value of transactions (TVT) brew by 52.6% from US$1.9 billion in 2021 to US$2.9 billion in 2022, while, revenue, as stated above, was GHS120.4 million.

Its local remittance revenue also grew by over 144% from GHS31 million in 2021 to GHS75.5 million in 2022, while foreign remittance volumes grew 52.6% from US$1.9 billion in 2021 to US$2.9 billion in 2022.

The company also recorded a significant 274% growth in profits from GHS8.76 million in 2021 to GHS32.8 million, while total assets grew from GHS143.8 million to GHS406.8 million, indicating almost 183% increase year-on-year.

Bank of Ghana

It is important to note that the Bank of Ghana (BoG), which is the MFS industry regulator, does not share data on market positions in that space. It only shares the totals for number (volume) of transactions, value of transactions, and balance of float among other things.

Per the 2022 Summary of Macroeconomic and Financial Data from the central bank, total number of mobile money transactions for the last quarter of that year stood at 1.46 billion, while total value of transactions was GHS339.2 billion. Meanwhile, the actual float (cash) involved in these transactions totalled GHS34 billion over the three-month period.

Some industry players believe the BoG steers clear of sharing MFS market position and revenue share details because it does not want to be exposed for supervising a grave market imbalance in that space.

Source: Business Ghana

Stakeholders within the financial technology space are calling on the government for a further reduction in the Electronic Transaction Levy to help expand the usage of digital payment in Ghana.

Mobile Telecommunications Network (MTN) says it has considered reducing its prices paid as charges within the Mobile Money space to attract more users and promote digital payments adoption in Ghana.