The Battle for Africa’s Mobile Money: Mastercard builds ON mobile money,Visa builds AROUND mobile money,Chinese players build AGAINST mobile money.
The Battle for Africa’s Mobile Money: Mastercard builds ON mobile money,Visa builds AROUND mobile money,Chinese players build AGAINST mobile money.
Nigeria’s 2023 cash crisis revealed who was ready for Africa’s digital future. When banks crashed and ATMs ran dry, two Chinese-backed apps—OPay and PalmPay—kept working while Nigerian banks scrambled.
Meanwhile, Mastercard was closing a $200 million deal with MTN’s mobile money division. Visa was launching its Africa Fintech Accelerator. And in Shenzhen, Transsion Holdings watched its payments app capture millions of users.
Three wildly different bets on the same market: Africa’s mobile money ecosystem, which processed $1.1 trillion in 2024, where cash still dominates 90%+ of retail payments, and where 1.4 billion people are going digital.