First half 2025: Mozambique’s wallets moved MT1.11 trillion, and bills were 1.7% of it

June 30, 2025

June closed a half-year in which 1.60 billion wallet transactions were mostly transfers and cash, and the bill-payment line stayed thin.

Mozambican e-money wallets processed 1.60 billion transactions worth MT1.11 trillion in the first half of 2025, according to the Banco de Moçambique’s wallet statistics. Payments of bills and services were 8.1% of the count and only 1.7% of the value.

June itself carried 297.3 million transactions, level with May, and MT203.46bn, down 1.8%. With one day fewer in the month, daily volume actually rose 3.3%. The average service payment fell to MT126, the lowest of the six months, after holding between MT143 and MT151 from January to May.

June inside the half-year

A flat month by count, and a rise per day, on the largest agent gain since March.

Deposits of cash came to 82.3 million (MT60.55bn), withdrawals to 49.4 million (MT40.05bn) and transfers to 143.5 million (MT100.09bn). Bill payments came to 22.1 million operations and MT2.77bn, 15% less by value than in May.

The agent network grew by 18,706 to 382,844, the second-largest monthly addition of the half after March’s 27,124, and subscriber records reached 23.03 million. Each agent handled about 776 transactions in June against 816 in May, so traffic per agent eased 4.9% after May’s peak.

Mechanism: a deposit, a transfer and a way out

For every MT100 put in as cash in the half, MT67 came back out as cash.

A cash deposit creates an e-money balance, a transfer moves that balance to another holder, and a withdrawal converts it back to notes. Over January to June, deposits totalled 454.0 million operations worth MT342.2bn and withdrawals 271.6 million worth MT229.4bn. The MT112.8bn difference stayed inside the system as balances. Bill payments drifted the other way: the count peaked at 23.2 million in March and was 22.1 million in June, while value fell from MT3.42bn to MT2.77bn.

Transfers were the largest line, at 748.0 million operations and MT523.9bn, or 47% of the value. The three institutions owe every one of these balances to customers, and the Club of Mozambique reported that they earned MT2.37bn of profit in 2024, up 41.69%, even though commission income slipped 2.71% to MT5.46bn.

Who the numbers describe

Accounts outnumber adults, and remittances are the reason wallets became the default.

E-money accounts reached 109.8 per 100 adults in the first quarter, the Club of Mozambique reported, against 32.3 for bank accounts. A figure above 100 means many people hold accounts with more than one wallet, which is why subscriber counts overstate people and transactions per agent is the more reliable gauge. Agents rose from 315,005 at the end of 2024 to 382,844 in June, a gain of 67,839 or 21.5% in six months.

Remittances explain the transfer line. A report cited by the Club of Mozambique found that about 80% of 2022 remittances came through electronic money, against 7% through banks. Cash also carries its own risk: on 30 April the Club reported that Nampula business owners, wallet agents among them, were being paid in counterfeit 200 and 1,000 metical notes.

The thin line is the opening

Bill payments are 1.7% of value, so the biggest growth available is in billers that are not yet on the menu.

A utility, school, insurer or landlord that collects monthly in Mozambique competes with 130 million half-year bill payments that averaged MT144. A biller that is absent from the wallet menu forces its customer to withdraw cash and queue, which the June ticket of MT126 suggests customers are already trying to avoid.

Get onto the bill-payment menu of at least one of the three wallets before the third quarter closes, and publish the biller code on every invoice. The half-year numbers show where the volume is, and it is not yet in the payments line.