The National Payments Systems (NPS) report by the Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) has shown that mobile money subscribers have increased at a rate of 32.6% since 2017, registering 5.6 million users in 2019.

The report’s figures are low, in contrast to the National Statistics Office (NSO) census, which says Malawi, as of 2018, recorded a population of 17.6 million, meaning that only a third of that enormous population subscribes to mobile money systems.

While the study shows a 3.7% increase in mobile money agents, it has shown concern for the agents presence being biased towards urban and semi-urban areas. The NSO population census in January showed that commercial areas registered the most populations, areas namely Lilongwe, Blantyre and Mangochi which register 2.6 million, 1.3 million and 1.1 million respectively.

When totaled, these commercial areas have a combined population of 5 million, which can be concluded that out of the 5.6 million subscribers, 5 million are from these commercial areas.

The report has therefore vouched for interventions to increase activity of customers using mobile money services.