A new report released by Juniper Research has projected that mobile money users in the world will stand at nearly 400 million people by 2018, up from the current 150 million users.

In a report dubbed “Mobile Money Transfer & Remittances: Domestic & International Markets 2013-2018”, mobile money growth is expected to grow rapidly due to the fact that many operators are recognizing its power and are going ahead to launch them in their local countries of operation.

Operators are also coming together to launch group-wide mobile money services to serve their customers across country borders, something that is now allowing for seamless money transfer among countries.

Kenya still remains as the model country where mobile money has been successfully implemented, and the report goes ahead to urge operators both in the country and worldwide to ensure that they provide a stable network infrastructure for mobile money transactions. The network providers have also been adviced to ensure that the agent: subscriber ratio is not greater than 1:500 to guarantee more people access the service.

Taxation was cited as a possible threat to the development of mobile money, with the report giving an example of the recent move by the Kenyan government to impose tax on all mobile money transactions.

“While the impact on the Kenyan market appears to have been limited thus far, we should point out that this is the most mature mobile money market,” reads part of the report, “The introduction of a similar tax in a market in the early stages of service adoption could serve as a severe brake on growth or make potential service providers reconsider planned deployments.”

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