Mobile money users transact an average of Shs184,000 per month  

Mobile money subscribers on average receive or send Shs184,000 in a month, according to Uganda Communications Commission (UCC). 

The details are contained in the UCC Market Performance Report for the quarter ended June. 

The report indicates that person-to-person transactions average at Shs92,000 have grown by 17 percent from Shs78,000 in April.  

Uganda currently has 40.7 million digital wallets shared between mobile network operators and non-mobile network operators, transacting an average of Shs5.99 trillion in person-to-person transfers. 

Mobile money has become an important aspect of Uganda’s financial markets with more than Shs156 trillion transacted through the platform as of  June, according to Bank of Uganda data. 

The platform has over the years registered massive growth in terms of transaction value and volumes, which as of  June had increased by 37.6 percent and 22.1 percent, respectively. 

Bank of Uganda data indicates, volume of transactions grew from 3.9 billion to 4.8 billion as of June 30. 

The UCC report, which analyses Average Monthly User Profile, further indicates that mobile money users conduct an average of two person-to-person transactions per month. 

It also profiles other monthly user behaviour, among which include volume of calls on and off-networks made by an average mobile phone use, number of MBs used and the number of international calls made or received by a mobile phone subscribers.   

On average, the report noted, mobile phone subscribers that stand at 31.3 million, use 174 minutes on on-network calls per month and just two minutes for off-network calls. 

During the period between April and June, Ugandans used 16.4 billion worth of domestic minutes on calls, of which 16.3 billion were on-network (calls within the same network), while 143 million minutes were off-network calls. 

Similarly, UCC indicated that international traffic remained stable, recording a total of 126 million minutes of international calls, of which 84.8 million minutes were incoming while 84.5 million were outgoing calls. 

Voice, which mainly involves calling and receiving calls, remains an important revenue stream for telecoms but has been experiencing declines in the last 10 years. 

However, the decline is being compensated with growth in data consumption and mobile mobile money, which have both become important revenue sources for telecoms. 

UCC indicates that the growth in internet usage could to some extent account for the stagnation in traditional voice traffic as consumer gradually change to data led-consumption patterns.

During the period ended June, UCC noted that an average mobile internet-enabled device had used an average of 1,180 MBs per month. 

However, the report doesn’t show growth patterns for individual users.  

In the three months to June, UCC indicated that Uganda had posted the highest volume of internet traffic, growing by 17 percent to 110 billion MBs from 93.62 billion in April. 

The growth, the report noted, is largely indicative of increased broadband usage boosted by an increase in mobile and wireless internet connections, which during the period accounted for 102 billion MBs, while fixed internet connections accounted for 7.75 billion MBs.

Consumer behaviour and average monthly services usage   

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