Bangladesh has 55% gender gap

Bangladesh has a gender gap of around 55 per cent in terms of ownership of mobile money accounts.

Among adults, 45 per cent of mobile money account holders are males while 20 per cent are females, according to GSMA’s State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money 2023, published on Tuesday.

Females also lag behind their male counterparts in terms of mobile ownership – 84 per cent male vs 67 per cent female – and mobile money awareness – 74 per cent male vs 61 per cent female.

The report said mobile money is continuing to drive financial inclusion for the world’s unbanked, particularly amongst women in rural communities where access to mobile money can play a transformational and empowering role.

According to the latest GSMA data, there is still a mobile money gender gap that has shown signs of widening over the last year, particularly in India, Indonesia, and Pakistan.

Mobile phone ownership is one of the main drivers of the mobile money gender gap. However, a number of other barriers and cultural norms also prevent women from adopting mobile money.

As a result, women in low- and middle-income countries are currently 28 per cent less likely than men to own a mobile money account, the report said.

It said mobile money adoption rates are even more significant than expected, with registered accounts, transaction values and deployments exceeding industry predictions globally.

The report, published annually by GSMA and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, demonstrates that rates of adoption are even quicker than expected, with the number of registered mobile money accounts growing by 13 per cent year on year, from 1.4 billion in 2021 to 1.6 billion in 2022.

While it took the industry 17 years to reach the first 800 million customers, this is extremely significant growth as it has taken just five years to reach the next 800 million. In 2022, daily transactions via mobile money reached $3.45 billion, ex-ceeding the $3 billion amount predicted in 2021. The total transaction value for mobile money grew by an incredible 22 per cent between 2021 and 2022 from $1 trillion to around $1.26 trillion.

However, in many areas worldwide, more work is still needed to help give underserved communities access to safe, secure and affordable financial services.

With 1.4 billion people worldwide remaining unbanked, the GSMA Mobile Money Programme is working with mobile opera-tors and industry stakeholders worldwide to create a robust mobile money ecosystem, increasing the relevancy and utility of these services and ensuring their sustainability. The 2023 report shows there are now 315 live mobile money deploy-ments across the globe, with peer to peer (P2P) transfers and cash-in/cash-out transactions still among the most popular use cases.

Bill payments using mobile money grew by 36 per cent year-on-year – faster than any other use case – and the industry continues to focus on use case diversification, playing an important role in digitising economies. The report also said during 2022, mobile money-enabled international remittances grew by 28 per cent year-on-year to $22 billion. During the pan-demic, many diasporas sent more funds via mobile money to friends and families than ever before.

As a result, international remittances grew significantly in both 2020 and 2021 as many senders favoured mobile money for its efficiency, speed, safety and cost-effectiveness. The trend continued in 2022, albeit at a slower rate. The number of mobile money agents also increased significantly last year, with a 41 per cent increase between 2021 and 2022. The overall number of agents went from 12 million in 2021 to 17.4 million in 2022.