Mobile Money Commissions
Mobile money commissions are the earnings made by facilitators of mobile money which is one of the multiple services offered by the mobile network operator MTN Group. In Cameroon, the subsidiary firm of this international giant is known as MTN Cameroon.
MTN Group and MTN Cameroon – mobile money
Created in South Africa at the rise of democracy as a mastermind in transformation, MTN Group has developed speedily by investing in up-to-date communication infrastructure and by molding the talent of natives wherever it is implanted. The MTN group now to its retail clients offers voice, data, and digital services in the 21 countries worldwide in which its operations have telecoms licenses. It equally offers larger enterprise solutions to clients of the public and corporate sectors in a total of 23 countries. The MTN brand is among the most praised brands in Africa as well as among the most treasured African telecoms brands.
As earlier mentioned, MTN Cameroon (MTNC) is a subsidiary firm of the MTN Group created on the 15th of February 2000. Its creation followed the acquisition by MTN International of the pioneer mobile network operator in Cameroon, CAMTEL Mobile. In 20 years of existence and activity, MTN Cameroon has positioned itself as the figurehead in the Cameroonian market of electronic communication, and a vital contributor to the social and economic growth of Cameroon.
Since its creation, MTNC has immensely invested in the building of a 2G, 3G, and 4G networks in the country which is presently the most solid and widely used in the country, as well as in the sub-region of Central Africa. The installations of MTNC enable it to narrowly cover 93% of the national population of Cameroon. MTN Cameroon has an expendable presence as well as a reliable service in all communities of over 50, 000 inhabitants.
What is the service about?
According to records by Media Intelligence about the Cameroon remittance market, mobile money was first introduced by Express Union in 2008 with the creation of their mobile money service called Express Union money. Following this, MTN Cameroon later launched its own service; MTN mobile money (MTN MoMo) in 2010 which gave way to the creation of Orange money (OMO) by Orange Cameroon a year later. Today, other banking systems have followed in the footsteps of Express Union with an example being the introduction of YUP by Société Générale du Cameroun.
It should be however noted that there exists a great difference between mobile money services offered by banking institutions and those offered by mobile network operators. The latter offers complete autonomy to its users whereby they can carry out all their financial transactions which are independent of bank accounts. The former on the other hand is just an extension of banking procedures to mobile phones.
What are mobile money commissions?
Mobile money is thus a mobile technology offered by mobile telephone network operators to their users for financial transactions. Upon creation of a mobile money account, users can send, receive, and save money on their mobile wallet and control all transactions directly from their mobile phones. Charges are levied on operations users undertake, and money withdrawals and deposits can be carried out at mobile money points. Those in charge at these points are known as agents and receive a commission on every transaction they successfully process.
Since 2019, mobile money agents have faced a drastic drop in their commissions from 1% to 0.7% and further to 0.5% per every 10.000FCFA deposit. While the agents were still accepting these changes, they were recently stroke again in June 2020 with a drop from 0.5% to 0.4% and from 1% to 0.8% for deposits and withdrawals respectively.
From fact and simple deduction, these reductions in commissions have led to the fall of mobile money retail which is now less lucrative than it was at its creation in 2010.