Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and South Africa are ahead of Nigeria in mobile banking usage/adoption in Africa, a report by the global market research company, TNS, has revealed.
The report titled; 'Navigating growth in Africa,' was made available to our correspondent on Thursday.
According to the report, 23 per cent of Kenyans currently use mobile banking; followed by 14 per cent of Tanzanians; 11 per cent of Ugandans; nine per cent of South Africans and six per cent of Nigerians.
Though Nigeria ranks fifth in mobile banking usage in Africa, the report revealed that the country was doing better than Cameroon with three per cent; Cote D'Ivoire, two per cent; Ghana, two per cent; and Senegal, one per cent.
The General Manager, Mobile Money, MTN Nigeria, Mr. Usoro Usoro, in a recent interview with our correspondent, described mobile banking as “an alternative channel that an account holder uses to access his traditional bank account.”
“So, instead of walking into the banking hall to access his account, he can use his phone to carry out his normal banking transactions without having to visit the bank. This, of course, means that he must have passed through the standard process of opening a bank account with the bank,” he said.
Usoro explained that mobile banking was different from mobile money, which he said, offered subscribers the opportunity to carry out real banking transactions via their mobile phones without having bank accounts.
The TNS report also revealed that more Nigerians were interested in mobile banking than all the other nine countries considered in the study.
