Africa’s mobile money market grew $1.4 trillion, according to a new report, cementing the continent’s role in driving a global surge in phone-based payments.
Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for about three-quarters of the $2.1 trillion global mobile money transactions in 2025, with 2.3 billion registered users worldwide, the mobile industry body GSMA found. That value of transactions is roughly double what it was four years ago.
The commercial success of M-Pesa — the mobile money unit of Kenya’s biggest mobile network operator Safaricom — has convinced investors and executives that mobile money can be a profitable financial platform. Mobile money expansion is increasingly being driven by usage rather than new accounts, GSMA wrote, with 80% of providers reporting improving profitability. In Kenya, mobile money users have doubled the number of active retail investors on the East African nation’s stock exchange.