Last October, Africas largest mobile operator MTN said that it would be launching its revolutionary Mobile Money service in Rwanda by the end of the year. Ok, so its over a month late - but better late than never for the people who previously didn’t have access to banking services. Let’s see what they’ll be getting.

Mobile Money is a service with a very specific remit - to bring banking services to the “unbanked”, those people who don’t have access to bricks-and-mortar institutions. This is far more common in rural areas of countries in Africa - you can easily end up with a situation where a persons nearest bank is several days travel away. So the majority of these people don’t have bank accounts, and don’t use any financial services.

This is where Mobile Money comes in. Even in these deep rural areas, mobile network coverage is far more common than banks - and mobile phone ownership is phenomenally high in many African countries. In areas where a computer is insanely too expensive to consider buying, a mobile phone is still a relatively cheap purchase. And so MTN is pushing a huge amount of resources into providing financial services through these phones.