Mobile Money and Mobile Payments: GSMA 2025 Accounts, Activity and Transaction Value

Mobile money is a digital store of value and means of payment run over mobile phones, usually offered by a mobile network operator and supported by a network of cash-in and cash-out agents. A bank account is not required; a basic mobile phone is enough [1]. It differs from mobile banking, which is app access to a traditional bank account [1].

This report uses the GSMA State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money 2026, which covers calendar year 2025 [1][2].

More than $2 trillion flowed through mobile money wallets globally in 2025 [1]. The GSMA report page gives the value as $2.1 trillion, about a fifth more than in 2024 [2].

It took the industry 20 years to pass $1 trillion in annual transaction value and just four years for that figure to double [1].

Mobile money reached 2.3 billion registered accounts in 2025, growing by 268 million [1]. A year earlier, the GSMA reported that registered accounts had passed two billion, with over half a billion monthly active users [3].

Accounts active in the past 30 days rose by 15% to 593 million in 2025 [1]. The monthly activity rate rose by about half a percentage point to 25.7%, the highest since 2021 [1]. That still leaves almost 75% of accounts inactive in a given month [1].

Most new registered and active accounts came from Sub-Saharan Africa, though almost every region where mobile money is offered grew [1].

The number of mobile money providers offering insurance increased by one-third in 2025 [1]. Credit remains the most widely offered adjacent financial service, nearly matched by savings products [1].

• Over 60% of mobile money providers say interoperability, know-your-customer and consumer protection rules have supported their operations [1].
• 24% of providers report that cross-border data transfer regulations have hindered their operations [1].
• Transaction taxes, where applied, encourage some users to revert to cash, according to the GSMA [1].

A wide gender gap in mobile money account ownership persists in seven out of 10 countries surveyed in the GSMA report [1]. Outside Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria, women who own an account are less likely than men to have used it in the past month [1]. Fraud remains widespread [1].

All figures are supply-side data collected by the GSMA Mobile Money programme from providers and refer to calendar year 2025 unless stated [1][2]. Values are in US dollars. Registered accounts are cumulative customer accounts at end-December; active accounts are those used for at least one value-moving transaction in the 30 days before end-December [4].

The chart compares registered accounts with 30-day active accounts in 2025; both come from the same GSMA release. The "almost 75% inactive" figure is the GSMA's own statement.