iGB Africa report - The rise of digital | Page 30

“ I don ’ t think it ’ s an exaggeration to say that mobile payments in Kenya has been the equivalent of PASPA being repealed in the US , as without the mobile payment structure , the online betting industry in Kenya wouldn ’ t exist ”

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Africa report Payments and the telcos
and institutions , including those on low incomes and rural communities . It added that the future growth of mobile money services in sub-Saharan Africa will be largely driven by the interoperability of mobile money services , which would give users the ability to transfer between customer accounts held with different system players .
The dominance of the M-Pesa payment channel in Kenya means that when the Kenyan authorities wanted to effectively shut SportPesa down last summer , all they had to do was order M-Pesa to stop allowing transactions . According to Safaricom , gaming-related revenues at M-Pesa did indeed tumble during the year , falling by KES175m to KES1.9bn a month , with then financial director Sateesh Kamath saying that , “ through the course of this year I would expect even that to unwind ”. He added : “ So we should have one more year left for gaming to bottom out .”
BEYOND KENYA
Safaricom has launched M-Pesa is six other countries in Africa , including Tanzania , Ghana and DR Congo . Meanwhile , other telecoms groups have their own mobile money operations , including :
● MTN Group , with its MoMo mobile money business , says it has more than 22 million mobile money subscribers across 15 countries , among them Ghana and Uganda .
● Airtel and Airtel Money .
● Orange and Orange Money .
● Tigo with Tigo Cash and Tigo Pesa ( the latter for Tanzania only ).
● Vodacom , which as of April this year became a 50 % owner of M-Pesa with Safaricom . This proliferation of mobile money providers and solutions provides an entry point for mobile gambling , suggests Spark from Opera Gaming . “ While a bottomup approach has proven to be the most successful in many countries , I believe we are , naturally , moving online ,” he says . “ Mobile money is , undoubtedly , the catalyst in markets with a largely unbanked punter base .”
Yet , despite the prevalence of mobile money solutions , there is as yet no provider with a pan- African reach . As Wilkie from Yellowbet suggests , this is likely due to the monopoly on mobile money on the part of the telcos . “ Some companies offer solutions in some countries , but nobody is yet to offer a transcontinental solution ,” he says .
As it stands , a user with one of the mobile money providers will be blocked from completing a transaction from any other country , even if that is with the same mobile money provider .
Ed Birkin , analyst at H2 Gambling Capital , agrees that the lack of a continent-wide payments option is just one
“ I don ’ t think it ’ s an exaggeration to say that mobile payments in Kenya has been the equivalent of PASPA being repealed in the US , as without the mobile payment structure , the online betting industry in Kenya wouldn ’ t exist ”
ED BIRKIN , H2 GAMBLING CAPITAL
of the reasons that the African market is so diverse in terms of individual countries . However , he adds that the availability of mobile payment options is clearly a big driver for betting in any given market .
“ I don ’ t think it ’ s an exaggeration to say that mobile payments in Kenya has been the equivalent of PASPA being repealed in the US , iGB Market Monitor