April 2025: Nampula’s wallet transfers jump 14% to 26.0m while Maputo’s slip

April 30, 2025

One northern province supplied more than half of the country’s extra transfers in the month, and it was the only one where bill payments grew.

Nampula province sent 26.0 million wallet transfers worth MT13.42bn in April 2025, up 14.0% in volume and 11.2% in value on March, according to the Banco de Moçambique’s e-money workbook. Its extra 3.19 million transfers were 54% of the 5.95 million added nationally.

Maputo province, which includes the capital and Matola, moved the other way: transfers slipped 1.2% to 35.45 million. Across the country the three wallets handled 272.3 million transactions worth MT193.98bn, a rise of only 0.8% in value, so the aggregate hid a shift in where the money was moving.

A month of thin growth and one loud province

National transfers rose 4.8%, and Nampula alone accounts for most of it.

Nationwide transfers grew from 123.0 million to 128.9 million operations, worth MT89.68bn. Cash deposits added just 0.4% to 74.7 million, withdrawals stayed near 47.5 million, and the network gained 10,519 agents to reach 362,440. Subscriber records reached 22.35 million.

Nampula’s agent count rose from 55,323 to 56,623, only 2.4%, so each agent handled more traffic: about 459 transfers in April against 412 in March. The network expanded slowly while the flow through it grew fast, which is the pattern of remittance-style traffic arriving in a place where cash-out points are already busy. Nationally the gap was smaller, at 356 transfers per agent against 349 in March.

Mechanism: a transfer is two balances and one agent

Value enters at a deposit, moves between wallets for a fee, and leaves at another agent’s counter.

A transfer debits the sender’s e-money balance and credits the receiver’s, so it needs no agent on the sending side beyond the original cash deposit. The agent matters when the receiver wants notes, because the withdrawal drains the agent’s own float and forces a rebalancing trip. A province that receives more than it sends therefore stresses its agents’ float before it stresses the network.

Since July 2022 the three wallets have exchanged funds through the national switch, after the Banco de Moçambique announced that interoperability between them was in effect. At SIMO’s 13th anniversary in June 2024, its board chair Maria Majimeja said the three wallet institutions carried 80% of the volume on the network, with 16 commercial banks sharing the other 20%. Wallet traffic is therefore the traffic the switch was built to handle.

Bills fell almost everywhere

Service payments dropped 8.6% nationally, and Nampula was the exception at plus 3.4%.

Payments of services fell from 23.2 million to 21.2 million operations, and from MT3.42bn to MT3.13bn. Of the ten provinces in the workbook, only Nampula recorded more bill payments than in March, at 2.87 million against 2.78 million. Maputo province lost 14%, from 8.66 million to 7.44 million, Sofala lost 12%, and Zambézia and Tete each lost about 5% to 6%.

On 1 April Vodacom and TotalEnergies signed a memorandum to accept M-Pesa at TotalEnergies’ 86 service stations. Vodacom said M-Pesa had more than 11 million subscribers and 120,000 agents. The memorandum targets the category that was shrinking, and it moves a cash-heavy sale, fuel, onto the wallet.

What a northern distributor does with this

Where transfers outrun bill payments, the wallet is a way to receive money, not yet a way to spend it.

Where transfers outrun bill payments, the wallet is a way to receive money before it is a way to spend it. Nampula moved 26.0 million transfers but only 2.87 million bill payments, a ratio of about nine to one, while the national ratio was six to one. Distributors and retailers in Nampula, Nacala and Zambézia should treat incoming wallet money as spendable only where a till accepts it.

Put a wallet payment option at every wholesale counter in the north, and agree with suppliers that settlement runs by wallet transfer, not by cash carried to an agent. The customers already have the balance, and April’s numbers show it arriving.