According to a global research, men own more mobile devices than women do, with a gender difference in account ownership of mobile money accounts of 55% in Bangladesh.
According to the GSMA’s annual study titled “State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money 2023,” women’s account ownership remained constant at 20% in 2022 compared to a year earlier while men’s account ownership climbed from 41% to 45%.
The research is based on information gathered from the 2022 GSMA Consumer Survey and the Global Adoption Survey. In nine nations—Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Senegal—the Consumer Survey was conducted.
The gender difference in mobile money account ownership is larger among rural residents in eight out of the nine countries studied.
More so than their urban counterparts, men and women who live in rural areas sometimes encounter difficulties to opening mobile money accounts. These obstacles include a lack of a cell phone, a lesser level of digital literacy, and more restrictive societal standards.
Although social and humanitarian cash transfers have been more digitalized since the Covid-19 outbreak began, the survey stated that many users still do not get payments using mobile money.
Less than 10% of mobile money users in the poll, with the exception of Bangladesh, had received any G2P payments in the previous three months.
At the time, mobile money salary payments were far more common in a number of nations, including 27% in Kenya, 18% in Bangladesh, and 17% in Ghana.
In other areas, including Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, and Nigeria, women are less likely than males to be aware of mobile money, which is a significant barrier that needs to be removed, according to the report.
Global mobile money transactions are growing quickly and will reach $3.45 billion in 2022, which is over 33% more than was anticipated in 2021. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided funding for the report, which is released annually by the GSMA.
According to the research, mobile money transactions increased in value from $1 trillion in 2021 to over $1.26 trillion in 2022.
According to the analysis, adoption rates are moving even more quickly than anticipated, with the number of registered mobile money accounts increasing by 13% annually from $1.4 billion in 2021 to $1.6 billion in 2022.
According to the report, the industry posted extraordinarily strong growth, taking just five years to reach the next 800 million subscribers after taking 17 years to do so for the first 800 million.
Although 1.4 billion people remain unbanked globally, more effort is still required in many regions of the world to enable underserved groups have access to safe, secure, and affordable financial services, it added.
The GSMA is a global organization that unifies the mobile ecosystem to find, create, and deliver innovation that is essential to societal progress and prosperous business settings.
