The mobile money regulatory index is a tool that measures the extent to which a country’s regulations provide an enabling framework for sustainable mobile money services. This tool was developed owing to the dearth of available indices specifically focussed on mobile money. The index is comprised of 26 indicators clustered in six dimensions: Authorisation; Consumer Protection; Transaction Limits; Know Your Customer (KYC); Agent Networks; and Investment and Infrastructure. We studied more than 90 countries, assessing each country against their 2018 and 2019 regulatory frameworks while applying the same methodology for the previous years.

Amidst the Covid-19 crisis in 2020, mobile money played a significant role in supporting livelihoods and was a key ally in the fight against the virus. Through collaboration with mobile money providers, regulators demonstrated renewed commitment to drive the digitisation of payments through mobile money. Several regulators issued specific measures to drive the uptake of mobile money services some of which were adopted permanently. Others made substantive regulatory reforms that had significant implications on mobile money. The 2020 iteration of the mobile money regulatory index offers a unique benchmarking assessment of mobile money regulations in view of these developments.

In this report, we delve into each country profiles in detail providing context to the components of regulation that favour mobile money growth and usage, as well as the areas that may be improved. The report features the specific regulatory instruments for mobile money that were assessed when the building the MMRI. It also provides an overview of the top movements and the attributable regulatory changes.