(Business in Cameroon) - The growth in the number of registrations to Mobile Money services is astounding in Cameroon. While at the launch of the Orange Money service in 2011, the Cameroonian subsidiary of the French telecoms group Orange and Banque Internationale pour le Commerce, l’Epargne et le Crédit (BICEC), its partner on this product; had planned on a volume of transactions of FCfa 2 billion after 5 years, the final result is rather six times higher than their initial forecast.
“We are today at FCfa 12 billion in electronic money issued”, revealed Stéphane Hurey, Central Director of BICEC. That was on 6 December 2016, in Yaoundé, during the official launch of the Visa Orange Money Card, which now enables the link between mobile money accounts from the French telecoms operator and the ATM (automatic teller machine) and EPT (Electronic payment terminal) networks operated by Visa in Cameroon.
This enthusiasm the Orange Cameroun subscribers have for mobile money services was more pronounced over the past 18 months, period during which financial transactions through this channel were multiplied by six, specified Thierry Millet, Director, Orange Money in the Orange group.
This performance, we learned, was made possible through the extension of the Orange Money network, which today has 3,600 points of sale throughout Cameroon, with a client base peaking at 2.8 million users, revealed Moussa Dao, Director, Orange Money at Orange Cameroon.
This penetration of mobile money services in Cameroonian habits is such that the country now has over 5 million users (all operators included), thus a third of the mobile subscribers regularly registered in Cameroon. These statistics were revealed by GSMA, the global telecoms operators group.
Brice R. Mbodiam