First half of 2026: MT1.47 trillion through Mozambique’s wallets at a ticket of MT676

June 30, 2026

Wordless fine-line illustration: A wide scale balanced on a market table, its left pan piled high with thousands of tiny coins and its right pan holding a few heavy gold bars, the beam tilted toward the coins

Six months in, e-money institutions have handled three quarters of last year’s transaction count, at a much smaller average size.

Between January and June 2026 Mozambique’s e-money institutions processed 2,182.1 million transactions worth MT1,474.8bn, according to the Banco de Moçambique’s July summary. That is 75% of the 2025 transaction count and 60% of its value, achieved in half the time.

Volume is racing ahead of value. The average wallet transaction in the half-year was MT676, against about MT854 across 2025. Whatever explains the shrinking ticket, it changes what a wallet payment is worth to a merchant, a lender or an advertiser, and the answer is in the mix of transaction types.

The half-year ledger

Transfers carry 53% of the count and 53% of the value; payments carry 8% of the count and 1.5% of the value.

The 2026 column of the July summary closes at 30 June: deposits of 549.8 million worth MT415.2bn, withdrawals of 301.8 million worth MT259.6bn, transfers of 1,163.2 million worth MT778.3bn and service payments of 167.3 million worth MT21.7bn. Full-year 2025 had 2,893.6 million transactions worth about MT2.47 trillion.

Transfers grew as a share of the count from 47.4% in 2025 to 53.3% in the half-year, and payments slipped from 8.2% to 7.7%. A transaction of any kind counts once, so a customer who moves MT500 to a cousin adds the same 1 to the count as one who pays a MT30,000 supplier.

Read against the 2025 mix, the half-year shows the wallet becoming a person-to-person network first and a checkout second. That matters most to businesses that pay a fixed wallet fee: a flat charge takes a larger share of a MT676 sale than of a MT854 one.

Why the ticket fell

More small sends, fewer large settlements, and cash tickets that are rising.

Cash-out tickets are moving the other way. The average withdrawal was MT795 in January and MT929 in June, and the average deposit rose from MT687 to MT801. Transfers held near MT690. The rising cash tickets fit a pattern in which customers move small sums freely inside the wallet system and take out or put in larger amounts less often.

The bank does not say why, so treat three explanations as hypotheses. Larger payments may have migrated to bank rails after the instant-payment system opened. Wallet users may be splitting larger sums into several sends. Or the 2026 series may capture more low-value peer transfers than the 2025 series did. The June data cannot separate these.

June on its own

388.4 million transactions worth MT276.6bn, with deposits dipping for the first time this year.

June’s own lines, found by subtracting May from the running total, show deposits of 94.4 million worth MT75.6bn, withdrawals of 52.1 million worth MT48.4bn, transfers of 214.5 million worth MT149.0bn and payments of 27.4 million worth MT3.6bn. Deposit count fell from 97.9 million in May, the first monthly decline of 2026, while the value of deposits still rose.

Subscriptions reached 26,336,459, up 350,038, and agents reached 494,955, up 8,510. Individual bank accounts stood at 6,539,428, up 32,038 on May.

Three months of METIX

The instant-payment platform is the new competitor for the wallet’s transfer business.

The Sistema de Pagamentos Instantâneos de Moçambique, operated by Sociedade Interbancária de Moçambique according to Jornal Económico, took effect on 2 March. The central bank presented it publicly as METIX in Matola on 16 March, with 15 banks, 12 microbanks and the three wallets taking part and Governor Rogério Zandamela promising access by website, app or USSD, as AIM reported. The Banco de Moçambique’s METIX page sets individual limits at MT200,000 a day and no fee for individuals.

No public series yet shows METIX volumes, and this article draws no link between them and the ticket drift. A business with wallet exposure should ask its wallet partner two questions for the second half: how much of your transfer volume now rides METIX rather than the wallet’s own ledger, and does the commission on it change? Set budgets for the second half on an average ticket near MT700, not MT850.