The mobile money market has seen rapid growth in recent years, initially driven by the lack of an alternative in markets where consumers have limited access to traditional financial services. This has been further fuelled by the increasing penetration of smartphones in emerging markets and their efficacy as a vehicle for delivering both basic and value-added financial services to financially excluded populations. The COVID-19 pandemic has further accelerated the uptake of mobile money, as well as increasing the use of other digital services. The past six years have seen a decrease in the proportion of people without a bank account in emerging economies, illustrated in Figure 1 below, fuelled by mobile money usage and availability:
