Survey Results for Mobile Money Use

The bar chart shows the mobile money platforms our readers prefer. Airtel Zambia just won our poll garnering 51.9% of all the votes cast with MTN Zambia coming in second with 47% of the votes. Surprisingly a few of our readers do not use any mobile money platform and we would be interested to know why? Some of the comments from the article:

“Airtel money is actually the best, plus you get to have a 50% discount for transacting using it. IT IS JUST AWESOME!” – Humphrey Chitalu

“I agree with Humprey Chitalu . I use both MTN mobile money and Airtel money. The majority of transactions on MTN mobile money except air time recharge are unsuccessful” – Felix

“I like MTN mobile but kindly have a lot outlets offering this service, eg. I’m based in Lumwana which is about 100km from Solwezi boma, so each time I have to travel to Solwezi to deposit in my account, another thing because of the same distance I can’t withdraw cash unless you go to Solwezi, so most I just use it for airtime purchase for myself not withdrawals” – Azel

The comments did leave us with some lingering questions; what is the value of mobile money to the Zambian economy, are any business to business payments being done using mobile money, is mobile money in Zambia just for paying utilities, why are the 1.10% of the respondents not using mobile money? As Azel has stated the services offered by the players are very limited. Both players have focused on facilitating demand for their own products and services rather than creating a mobile money based economy.

Mobile Money can be a much needed facilitator in the market both for business to business trade. It will also help create a new economic sector where companies can specialise in Mobile Money for value creation.