Africa’s reliance on mobile money should be phased out
Experts stress the importance of reducing the heavy dependency on the use of mobile money in most parts of Africa.
Africa’s gaming market is very diverse, which makes each country and region unique. This in itself poses several opportunities as well as challenges – particularly because the industry is still considered as an emerging market. Technological advancement is not yet at its peak in comparison to the west, this has made people to rely heavily on mobile payment as it is considered efficient vis a vis bank transfer or credit card payment. Some have argued whether crypto currency is the antidote for Africa.
Online gambling continues to hit new grounds as it is becoming solely dependent on mobile money transactions. For example, in Kenya alone, there are about 58 million mobile money subscribers with the minimum amount for bets currently increased to 100% according to YogoNet.com.
Experts at the SBC Digital Summit Africa highlighted that the ever-changing rules and regulations, the market will yet again, need to adapt to a new normal.
He echoed his concerns that the telephone companies have become so powerful that they have essentially become as big as bank or even bigger in some cases. It’s almost impossible not to go through a telecom company without first getting access to a telecom based payment service, saying:
Being the product owners of mobile money, Africa’s telcos have aggressively pushed the take-up of mobile money, essentially becoming bigger than the banks,” he added. “It has therefore become impossible to do anything in the online space, without having access to these teleco based payment services.
Mark Tipping, CEO of Gaming4Africa.com, says:
Not to generalise but African payment foundations have been established on mobile money services – where your mobile phone number functions as a light bank account,
However, Tipping underlined that although mobile money remains an ‘effective but blunt transactional tool’, they have limited African consumers who further stifled digital business with hard ‘localised integrations’.
In Africa, some people worry about using traditional online payment such as payment by credit card hence why mobile money is widely used.
According to the CEO of Konfambet, Tunde Aremu, Nigerian consumers always had their reservations about using traditional online payment services such as e-wallet options. He went on to say that:
However as people have become more open to online businesses, we now see that customers want to use more secure options and will pay through card or e-wallet options.
Aremu noted that the Nigeria government have now made it a point to put pressure on local banks to radically improve their online payment services made available to digital enterprises.
About SiGMA’s revamped website:
SiGMA Group is excited to announce the launch of its newly revamped website. The website is currently available in 5 languages, English, Russian, Mandarin, Portuguese, and Spanish with plans to add another 5 languages over the coming months – namely French, Thai, Korean, Japanese, and Hindi.
