A total of 2.2 million mobile money accounts were removed from the network of telecom companies between January 2021 and March 2021 following an audit, the latest report by Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) shows.
According to the UCC report for the first quarter of the current year, the removal of the accounts saw the number of active mobile money accounts revised from 22.5 million to 20.3 million at the end of March 2021.
“Following a clean-up of mobile network operators’ account registers, the number of active mobile money accounts was revised downwards, from 22.5 million to 20.3 million at the end of March 2021. This represents 66% of the 30.5 million registered mobile money accounts,” the report reads.
It adds: “The 66% active accounts amounts to double the African average of 30% account activity. On a year-on-year comparison, more than 5 million new accounts were registered between March 2020 and March 2021. This growth was largely fuelled by significant fee waivers, increased merchant acceptance and limited movements at the height of the pandemic,” the report adds.
The recently enacted National Payment Systems Act 2020 provide for suspension or deletion of inactive subscribers from the mobile money system.
Mobile money has been one of the fast growing sectors boosted by massive penetration in the mobile telephone sector and diversification of the mobile phone functions.
To streamline this growing service in Uganda, the telecom giants MTN and Airtel havw issued with a no objection to separate their digital finance business (mobile money) from the cellular network operations. “These no objections are in partial fulfilment of new regulatory obligations instituted by the National Payments Systems Act 2020 and the Uganda Communications Pricing and Accounting Regulations 2019,” the report stated.