August 2026 in view: six months of wallet data show volume up 51% but tickets down 21%

August 31, 2026

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The month is not yet published; the first half of the year already gives the yardstick to read it by.

On the last day of August 2026, the freshest official data on how Mozambique pays cover January to June. In that half-year the country’s electronic money wallets recorded 2,182 million transactions worth about MT1.47tn, according to the cumulative tables in the Banco de Moçambique monthly statistical summary. The August figures follow in a later summary, so this is the baseline against which they will be read.

The half-year averages 363.7 million operations a month, 51% above the 241.1 million monthly average of all 2025, but only 19% above it in value, at MT245.8bn against MT206.0bn. Volume has grown far faster than value, so the average operation has shrunk: MT676 in the first half of 2026, against MT854 across 2025.

Reading the gap between count and value

More payments at a smaller size is what cash substitution looks like at the margin.

The 2025 average was pulled up by December, when wallets moved a record value, so the comparison flatters the smaller 2026 ticket somewhat. Even so, the direction is clear inside 2026: the average rose from MT621 in January to MT712 in June while monthly counts climbed 21%, from 321.3 million to 388.4 million.

A rising average inside the year and a lower average than 2025 both fit one picture. Wallets are adding many small everyday movements, and the seasonal large ones, salary and festive remittances, have not arrived yet. The second half will include them.

For a merchant the practical meaning is pricing. If the typical wallet operation is about MT676 and the typical bill payment MT129, a fee model built for large card baskets does not fit most of what customers actually do on their phones, and acceptance offers should be priced for small and frequent payments.

The half-year’s structure

Transfers are 53%, cash conversion 39%, and payments for services 8%.

Transfers reached 1,163 million operations worth MT778.3bn. Deposits were 549.8 million and MT415.2bn; withdrawals 301.8 million and MT259.6bn. Payments for services totalled 167.3 million operations worth MT21.7bn, an average of MT129 and 1.5% of value.

Deposits exceeded withdrawals by MT155.6bn over the six months. That figure is the net notes that agents took across their counters into electronic balances, and in a system with more than 450,000 agents it represents the cash that agents have had to carry to banks or to wholesale suppliers. The agent network stood at 467,622 at the end of March, 92.5% of the country’s 505,316 access points, as O Económico reported in July.

Payments for services are the line closest to what a business sells. They are 7.7% of operations across the half-year, so for every 13 wallet operations only one is a payment for a service, and the other twelve are people moving money to each other or to and from cash. For scale, first-quarter data reported in May show 82.1 million service payments from January to March, which leaves about 85 million for the second quarter on the half-year total above.

The infrastructure the numbers rest on

Instant bank-to-wallet transfers now sit beside the old agent cycle.

The Sistema de Pagamentos Instantâneos de Moçambique has been in operation since 2 March, and the Portuguese press reported at its start that it links the banks and the wallet issuers. The wallet statistics used here count only the issuers’ own operations, so any SPIM effect appears indirectly: a slower rise in withdrawals, or a higher share of transfers.

By that test the first half is cautious. Transfers were 53.3% of operations in the six months and withdrawals 13.8%. The relevant question for August is whether withdrawals per transfer, 0.26 across the half, start to fall.

What to watch when August lands

Four ratios will tell you more than the headline total.

First, the daily rate: June ran at 12.95 million operations a day, and July’s pace, if published, should be judged per day rather than per month. Second, the average ticket against MT712. Third, transfers per deposit against 2.27 in June. Fourth, the average withdrawal against MT929.

The action for a business is to prepare its own dashboard on the same four ratios before the summary appears, so that a change in the national pattern can be checked against its own customers. A retailer that sees a rising ticket in its own wallet receipts ahead of the industry has a head start on its pricing.