According to Visual Capitalist, 13 of the world’s largest urban centres in 2100 will be African (see fig.1 below), indicating the vast access to new markets – one which will be enhanced by dramatically different bandwidth and costs.
At a recent seminar held by TMT Finance, at the TMT Finance Africa in Cape Town 2019 event, four industry-leading panellists from PayU, Jumo, World Remit, and MFSAfrica, tackled the topic of how cross-border payments and remittances are exploding across the continent, unpacking five key transformations:
“For example in Tanzania, 91% of our volume is going to rural areas. Historically, that was not the case because individuals would have to leave the village and come into an urban area, find an agent and get the cash. That would be almost a day’s experience, and unfortunately on the way home there’s significant leakage for whatever reason. So for mobile-to-mobile you can now send directly to the intended recipient and then that money is theirs to use for its intended purpose, be it education, staple food stuffs, or other. For this reason, individuals will send in more often, yes often it’s low of value, but they send two to three times more per month,” concludes Andrew Stewart, managing director EMEA, of World Remit.
As the world sits up and takes notice of Africa, the pieces are slowly beginning to fall into place as innovators across the industry unite suppliers, seek to overcome regulatory challenges and building an infrastructure that can sustain the volume that Africa will be delivering as bandwidth increases, data costs decrease and smartphone proliferation brings hundreds of millions more online.