fbpx

How Mobile-Money Is Changing Lives In Rwanda

How Mobile-Money Is Changing Lives In Rwanda

If cash is king then mobile-money is its queen in east Africa. The success of mobile-money in Kenya has grown to the neighboring country and is changing the way people live by making payments for goods and services more convenient and simpler than reaching for credit cards or counting out paper bills.

The service comes in different names in Rwanda, as CNBC Africa found out in this tiny country in the middle of Africa with a very high economic growth rate, but what it simply does is store money on a cell phone and enables the subscriber to send it to any other phone number in the network, be it a cable company, a taxi driver, or a friend, at a small fee. Payments from other mobile-money users are added to the recipient’s digital balance, which they could later withdraw in cash from the nearest local agent.

Rwanda has one ATM for every 123,000 people, compared to the U.S. which has one for every 740 people. Across sub-Saharan Africa, more than 75 percent of the adult population had no bank account as of 2011, making mobile-money the most efficient way for them to access any form of financial services.