Ethiopia’s digital payment service has seen over 750 percent growth over the past five years, a senior official of the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) has said.
Speaking at ‘Ethiopia Digital Week 2024 in Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia, on Friday, NBE governor Mamo Mihertu said a total of 5 trillion Ethiopian birr (87,987,000,000 U.S. dollars) was transacted through digital payment system last Ethiopian budget year which ended on July 8, 2023.
The governor said 4.2 trillion Ethiopian birr (73,909,080,000 U.S. dollars) has been transacted through digital payment system over the past six months with the numbers of mobile money, mobile banking and credit card users have reached 90 million, 32 million, 42 million respectively over the past five years.
According to the governor, the cash transactions across the east African country have significantly declined amid instant payment networks are seeing more and more growth.
The government of Ethiopia launched “digital Ethiopia 2025 strategy” in June 2020, aiming at providing digital services to the country’s key industries, including agriculture, manufacturing, and tourism, with a focus on the private sector.
Mengistu Endalemaw, mobile banking director at the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE), told Xinhua that money transaction through a digital platform is exponentially growing across the country especially after the end of COVID-19 pandemic.
Endalemaw attributed the growth, among others, to improving digital literacy and high mobile phone penetration rate across the country.
He underscored the need to attract and mobilize investment in digital infrastructure, expand telecom services, introduce strong financial policies and increase access to affordable finance for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and coordinate with public and private actors to accelerate the digital financial sector.
MG/as/APA