Uganda’s mobile financial sector has been growing with increasing number of mobile money subscribers ever since its inception, but things seem to be changing of late. Uganda Communication Commission( UCC) has released its communication sector report for the last quarter of 2018 covering the industry performance, trends and key developments in the areas of internet, mobile money and mobile usage penetration within the country.
On the mobile money spectrum, the total number of active subscribers who have registered business in the period of 90 days has dropped by 3.6%. The number dropped from 14,169,240 from the third quarter of 2018 to 13,652,583 in Q4. This could most likely be due to the mobile money tax.
On the contrary despite all that, the number of mobile money registration grew by 2.2% from 23,249,967 to 24,472,033 in the last quarter of 2018. And the number of mobile subscription (GSM) grew by 5.3%.
The balance on customers accounts has been one of the items that have registered a zig-zag pattern in 2018 but rather saw life in the final quarter of 2018 by the growth of 17.4% from UGX 288,114,749,253 in Q3 to UGX 338,207,228,569. The value of transactions and the number of transactions all grew by 21.1%, and 12.8% respectively in the period Q3 to Q4.
The number of mobile money agents had been on a growing as well. In Q4, the number of mobile money agents grew by 3.5%. Around 6,281 new agents registered in the period of October to December of 2018.
