Mobile Money Transactions in Tanzania Reach TZS 50 Trillion in 2016-17

Between July 2016 to April 2017, a total of 1,444.6 million transactions valued at TZS 49,997.1 billion were transacted in mobile money transfer in Tanzania, the Central Bank (BOT) indicates in its Monthly Economic Review of May 2017.

This is 13.9% more than TZS 43,867.9 billion that were transacted via 1,217.70 million transactions during the similar period of the preceding year.

BOT explains that the interoperability among the four major mobile payment services providers has substantially contributed to the increase in transactions across network operators and therefore reducing the cost of mobile financial services.

The number of registered active users of mobile phone financial services was above 17.3 million by the end of April 2017.

Meanwhile, the retail payment systems such as the usage of card payments, automated teller machines and point of sale (POS) increased slightly.

The four major mobile money providers in Tanzania are Vodacom with M-Pesa (42% market share), Tigo with Tigo Pesa (31%), Airtel with Airtel Money (24%), and Zantel with Ezy Pesa(3%).

Mobile providers in Tanzania began to interconnect their services first with a bilateral arrangement between Tigo and Airtel in September 2014 (with the official commercial launch in February 2015).

In December 2014, Tigo connected with Zantel, and in February 2016, Vodacom announced connecting with Airtel and Tigo.

By the beginning of 2016 Tanzania was the first country in the world to achieve full interoperability , i.e. the ability of users of different mobile money services to transact directly with each other.

In 2016, Halotel became the fifth mobile money provider in Tanzania with Halo Pesa.