Mapping the World’s Largest Mobile Money Markets

For years, mobile money was framed as a workaround to traditional banking structures; that is, a way to extend financial access in emerging markets without dependable or widespread financial infrastructure.where traditional banking fell short.

However, as our latest forecasts demonstrate, that framing no longer holds. By 2026, mobile money platforms will be serving hundreds of millions of active users across some of the world’s largest and fastest-growing economies. India alone is on track to reach nearly 200 million mobile money users, with Indonesia, Nigeria, and Bangladesh not far behind.

What’s driving this growth isn’t novelty, but necessity. In many of these markets, mobile money has become the default layer for everyday financial activity: person-to-person transfers, bill payments, merchant transactions, government disbursements, and increasingly, credit and savings.

There’s also a geographic pattern worth paying attention to. While Asia dominates the top of the ranking, Africa continues to punch above its weight. Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, and South Africa all feature prominently, underlining how operator-led ecosystems and agent networks still matter, even as app-based wallets scale elsewhere.

For banks, fintechs, and payment providers, the takeaway is simple: mobile money is no longer a simple add-on to strategy. In many emerging economies, it is the strategy. The opportunity now sits in what comes next: interoperability, merchant services, cross-border use cases, fraud prevention, and monetisation beyond basic transfers.

User numbers will continue to climb through the decade, but the bigger shift will be in how deeply these platforms are embedded into national payment systems — and how much value providers can extract once scale is already achieved.

Source: Mobile Money in Emerging Markets 2026-2030

Read the Press Release: Mobile Money Users in Emerging Markets to Reach 2.2 Billion by 2030, as Interoperability and Integration Drive Growth

Download the Whitepaper: The Next Steps for Mobile Money – Interoperability and Openness