Exploring the Relationship between Mobile Money Regulation and Usage

Mobile money has helped reduce the financial exclusion gap in low- and middle-income countries, with more than 1 billion registered accounts at the end of 2019. In Sub-Saharan Africa, almost half of mobile money users are reliant solely on mobile money to access financial services.

The link between an enabling regulatory framework and a successful mobile money market has been supported by previous research, though many of these studies have been qualitative or focused on case studies.

This paper contributes to the literature by leveraging the GSMA Mobile Money Regulatory Index, which benchmarks mobile money regulation based on 26 individual indicators.