Mozambique, January 2025: MT150.6bn through e-money wallets at MT647 a transaction

January 31, 2025

The first payments month of 2025 shows three systems with three different ticket sizes, and only one of them reaches the whole country.

In January 2025 Mozambique’s electronic money institutions processed 232.9 million transactions worth about MT150.6bn, an average of MT647 each. In the same month the country’s 1,391 ATMs recorded 6.6 million transactions and its 34,841 POS terminals 4.8 million card payments, according to the Banco de Moçambique payments statistics.

Counting accounts says little about how Mozambicans actually pay. Comparing the size of the average transaction on each rail says a great deal: the wallet on a phone handles small, frequent movements, the internet-banking channel moves business-sized sums, and the card terminal sits somewhere between them. A merchant who reads those differences correctly knows which counter to equip.

Three rails, three ticket sizes

The average transaction separates the systems more sharply than the volume does.

The Banco de Moçambique workbook on electronic banking puts the January average card payment at a POS terminal at roughly MT2,969, and the average ATM withdrawal at MT3,335 (MT21.3bn over 6.4 million withdrawals). A mobile-banking transfer to a phone number averaged MT2,593, while a mobile-banking transfer to an account averaged MT10,851. Internet banking sits in a different league: 1.72 million transfers worth MT122.3bn, or about MT71,002 each, which is the profile of payroll and supplier settlement rather than household spending.

Set against those figures, the MT647 wallet transaction is the smallest ticket in the system. It covers deposits, withdrawals, transfers and service payments together. Transfers between wallets account for 103.0 million of the month’s operations and MT70.1bn of its value, so person-to-person movement, not merchant checkout, carries most of the money.

Where the cash goes in and comes out

Agents, not machines, are the physical network of Mozambican payments.

The e-money institutions counted 321,016 agents in January, up from 315,005 at the end of 2024, against 1,391 ATMs and 34,841 POS terminals. The bank terminals had shrunk over the same weeks: the December 2024 tables in the Banco de Moçambique monthly summary show 1,401 ATMs and 35,486 POS. A Lusa report carried by the Club of Mozambique described the fifth consecutive year of falling cash-machine coverage, alongside agent density of 1,686 per 100,000 adults.

The mechanism runs through the agent’s float. A customer who deposits cash buys electronic money from the agent, and the agent’s own wallet balance falls; a customer who withdraws does the reverse. In January, 72.4 million deposits worth MT47.1bn met 36.4 million withdrawals worth MT30.3bn, so about MT16.7bn more entered the wallet system as cash than left it. That balance stayed in accounts, moved onward as transfers or paid for services.

The account gap behind the volumes

One account type is now more than three times the size of the other.

The monthly summary, updated to January, records 20.76 million e-money subscriber records against about 6.14 million bank accounts in meticais: 3,860,652 held by men, 2,082,599 by women and 197,821 joint or company accounts. Subscriber counts are a proxy for people, since one person can hold several wallets, so the ratio of roughly 3.4 to one overstates the gap in individuals. It still explains why the wallet networks record so many more transactions than the banks.

The two systems are also linked, which is the piece most business plans miss. M-Pesa, mKesh and e-Mola have been interoperable since 1 July 2022, as the Banco de Moçambique announced at the time, so a customer of one can pay a merchant registered with another.

What a retailer should do with the numbers

Match each counter to the ticket it will actually see.

Bank terminals remain concentrated where the money is. Maputo City and Province hold 20,478 of the 34,841 POS terminals, or 58.8%, and 594 of the 1,391 ATMs. A shop in Nampula, Tete or Lichinga relies on the agent network for cash-in and on the phone for payment, whatever the state of its card reader.

The practical move for a retailer with baskets near MT650 is to register for wallet payment on all three networks and treat the POS terminal as a Maputo and high-ticket tool. A supplier invoicing in the tens of thousands of meticais should quote an internet-banking account, since that is where transfers of that size already travel.