Banks tail telcos for deposits

Where banks are struggling, telecom companies are thriving and that is the story that best tells the uneasiness of bankers at the growth of mobile money services in Ghana.

Since 2011 when the first mobile money service was launched in Ghana, the penetration rate of mobile money has grown exponentially at a time growth in banking customers has lagged behind despite aggressively turning to mobile banking to boost banking transaction.

Most tellingly, growth in deposits into mobile money accounts has overtaken the total deposits at the banks by a mile, indicating that access to cheap funds by banks for lending and other transaction activities is hard to come by.

According to Bank of Ghana, mobile money balance of float, a term that describes deposits on people’s mobile wallet, has grown by 4,214 times since 2012 to GHC845.2 billion as at the end of September this year.

Since 2012, however, the total deposits of the banks has grown from GHC19.6 billion to GHC42.2 billion at the end of July this year, a 116 percent rise.

This means that banks will have to grow their deposits several dozen times to match the current deposits into mobile money wallet, a development that has riled banking institutions which are now convinced telecom companies are now directly in competition for the customers’ deposits.

A recent survey by global research and accounting firm, PwC, noted that its respondents, which included CEOs, Chief Financial Officers and Heads of E-banking of commercial banks are nervous telecom companies will soon become competitors instead of the much trumpeted partners.

“Telcos will at a point become direct competitors to banks instead of partners and service providers to the industry,” the survey report noted.

For many banks, mobile money operators are now engaged in banking services for which they have not been licensed since the operators just provide customers with alternatives to traditional banking.

Yet, telecom operators have played down the fears of the banking institutions insisting that funds mobilized from customers through the mobile money service ends up in the banks as the E-Money Issuer Guidelines of the Bank of Ghana does not allow mobile money operators to be the custodians of the deposits in the wallet.

The surge in mobile money usage nonetheless shows the vital role telecom companies are playing to advance the central bank’s cashlite economy agenda, and also ensure that the push for more financial inclusion is brought into the hands of millions of Ghanaians.

Industry watchers say the growth of mobile money will allow millions of people who are otherwise excluded from the formal financial system to perform financial transactions relatively cheaply, securely, and reliably.