Cameroon Mobile Money Introduction

Cameroon is located in Central and western Africa, within the scope of Central Africa, but close to West Africa, and has a large border with Nigeria.

Population: 28.61 million.

Languages: English and French - one of the rare countries to have both English and French as official languages (similar to Canada), but about 4/5 speak French. Since the original territory was a combination of French and British colonies, the problem is that the French area only speaks French, and the English area only speaks English, so it can be basically considered that Cameroon is a French-speaking country.

Religion: Catholicism (30%), Christianity (20%), Islam (20%), Traditional Religion (30%)

GDP per capita:$1,445 (World Bank 2022 data). -- In the past 10 years, Cameroon's per capita GDP growth has hardly increased significantly, which was 1,400 US dollars in 2013, taking into currency inflation and other factors, indicating that the living standards of Cameroonian people are declining.

Currency: Central African franc, symbol XAF.

There are two kinds of French francs in Africa, the West African Franc XOF and the Central African Franc XAF.

West African francs, comprising the eight member states of the West African Economic Union (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d 'Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo).

The Central African franc is the official currency of Equatorial Guinea, the Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Cameroon, Chad and the Central African Republic.

The West African Franc is equivalent to the Central African Franc and has a fixed exchange rate with the euro, 1 euro =655.957 Central African francs/West African francs. But the two do not circulate.

Among the country's more than 28 million people, the number of mobile phone connections is 23.92 million, and the penetration rate is 84.6%.

The coverage rate of 3G, 4G, and 5G in the country is about 54.5%. The tariff for 1G data is $1.53.

Internet users are 12.89 million, with a penetration rate of 45.6%, while Internet social media users are 3.9 million, with a penetration rate of 13.8% (this data is questionable, because this statistic does not count Whatsapp, only Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Linked, etc.).

Cameroon has several mobile operators in the country, MTN, Orange and Camtel, MTN and Orange are local subsidiaries of international multinational companies, and Camtel is a local state-owned company. Among them, MTN's market share is 51.6% (MTN financial figures), Orange's share may be 30%-40%, and the rest is Camtel.

However, in the field of mobile money, only MTN and Orange have launched local mobile wallets, so that the two are evenly matched in terms of market share.

According to the following data, the national penetration rate of credit cards is 1.6% and debit cards are 7.4%.

Mobile Money penetration is 42.4%, or a total of about 12 million, and MTN and Orange each have about 6 million users, which is relatively good in West and Central Africa.

From the function introduction of the two official websites, it can be seen that the two Mobile Money are still in the USSD stage, although the App has been launched, but the number of users is not large, which is also a common problem for African operators, that is, they do not know how to promote the App.

In addition to MTN Momo and Orange Money, there are also a small number of local fintech companies, such as Afrikpay, Amoney, Maviance and other payment gateway and aggregation companies.

Overall, Cameroon is a country with relatively good development of mobile money in West and Central Africa, but the country is relatively small and the population is not large, and everyone generally does not pay attention. This is also the state of most small countries in West Africa, Central Africa.