Nowhere In The World Uses Mobile Banking As Much As Africa

A new World Bank-Gallup poll shows that the countries of sub-Saharan Africa are the world’s leaders in sending, spending, and saving money via phone.

While it would be easy to assume that using your phone to pay for things is for hipsters and techies, the results of a World Bank survey released Wednesday shows just how wrong you'd be.

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There's actually been more growth in mobile banking — or using a phone-based account as a means to store or transfer money — among users in sub-Saharan Africa than anywhere else in the world.

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In a many of the more remote parts of the countries in the region, it's difficult to have access to any form of banking at all, preventing workers from saving their wages and requiring cash for most purchases. But, as a CNBC article noted in 2013, cell phone ownership and usage in Africa "jumped from 3% in 2002 to 48% in 2010 and is expected to hit 72% next year."

That uptick is reflected in the new Findex. The first version of the Findex, published in 2011, showed that 24% of adults in the region had some form of account to store their money. Three years later, that's grown to 34%. While that may not seem like a lot, it's a difference of millions of people.

Mobile banking has been a huge driver of that growth. Sub-Saharan Africa is the only of the World Bank's regions where more than 10% of adults report having a mobile account, according to the Bank.

Issouf Sanogo / Getty Images

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