Payments glossary · Methods
Mobile Money
Mobile money is a service, usually run by a mobile network operator or its partner, that lets people store, send and receive money with a basic mobile phone, using a network of local agents to convert cash into e-money and back.
How Mobile Money works
A mobile money account is linked to the customer's phone number rather than a bank account. Customers load funds by handing cash to an agent, often a local shop, then pay bills, merchants or other people through a USSD menu or an app, and withdraw cash through agents again. M-Pesa in Kenya is the best-known example. The GSMA reports 2.3 billion registered mobile money accounts in 2025, 593 million of them active monthly, handling about 2 trillion US dollars of transactions, with most new accounts in sub-Saharan Africa.
For merchants selling into Africa and parts of Asia and Latin America, mobile money can be the main digital payment method, reaching customers who have no bank account or card. Payments are typically push-based: the customer receives a prompt on their phone and approves it with a PIN. This keeps fraud and chargeback risk low, but confirmation can arrive asynchronously, so failed prompts and timeouts need handling in the checkout flow.
Access is usually through local aggregators or PSPs connected to several operators in each country. Consider which operators and countries are covered, local-currency settlement and conversion, transaction and balance limits set by regulators or operators, refund and payout support, and whether you need a local entity. Many of the same providers also offer mobile money payouts for paying sellers, drivers or customers.