ISLAMABAD: Only around half of all women in Pakistan own a mobile phone compared to 81 percent of men, and without concerted efforts, women’s mobile ownership will continue to lag, preventing them from progressing along the mobile money user journey, says the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSMA).
The GSMA in its latest report, “The State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money” stated that there was still a gender gap in account ownership that had recently widened in countries such as Nigeria and Pakistan.
India and Pakistan have the largest gender gaps in mobile money account ownership, which is due to a range of factors, including social norms and low mobile ownership among women.
Increasing by 36 percent in 2022, bill payments had the fastest-growing transaction values, reaching nearly $88 billion. There was strong adoption of bill payments: 46 percent of mobile money users in Kenya claimed to have performed a bill payment in the last 30 days, as well as 36 percent in Indonesia, 27 percent in Senegal, and 25 percent in Pakistan.
Regional and country-level differences persist in the use of mobile money to send or receive international remittances. In 2022, mobile money-enabled international remittances grew by 28 per cent to top $21 billion.
Based on the GSMA 2022 Consumer Survey, 20 percent of mobile money users in Senegal and Bangladesh claimed to have received funds from a relative or friend living abroad in the last 30 days. However, this was much lower in Pakistan (six percent), Kenya (seven percent), and Ghana (nine percent).
Physical cards tied to a mobile money account, as offered in Pakistan by JazzCash and Telenor Bank’s EasyPaisa, enable account owners to pay both physical and online businesses, as well as withdraw cash from ATMs. In markets where accessing a bank account can be challenging for rural or low-income segments, such cards can drive financial inclusion by providing access to payment systems normally reserved for banked individuals.
On the demand side, the 2022 GSMA Consumer Survey found that the use of savings accounts remains unequal between mobile money markets. In Kenya, 30 percent of surveyed mobile money users said they had sent money to a savings account in the last 30 days. In Nigeria, more than 51 percent of respondents claimed the same. However, only four percent of respondents in Senegal and eight percent in Pakistan reported doing so.
In five of the seven survey countries with available data (Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Pakistan), the gender gap in mobile money account ownership widened over the past year primarily due to mobile ownership among men growing at a faster pace than women’s. In Pakistan, men’s account ownership grew from 19 percent to 26 percent in the past year while women’s has remained unchanged at four percent.
In Pakistan, while women are less likely than men to engage in most use cases, they are more likely to use mobile money to send and receive remittance payments, both domestically and internationally.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023