Mobile money transactions hit K452.0 billion in 2023, as data consumption doubles

Mobile money services have continued to register a high adoption rate by consumers as transactions recorded in the sector in 2023 shot up to K452.0 billion.

This was an increase of 50 percent from K295.8 billion recorded in 2022.

This is contained in the 2023 Annual Market Report for the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Sector released on Wednesday by the Zambia Information and Communication Authority (ZICTA).

ZICTA Manager Corporate Communications, Hanford Chaaba, noted that mobile money services continued with their strong performance in 2023.

“Mobile money services continued with their strong performance with official estimates from the Bank of Zambia highlighting that the value of mobile money transactions increased by more than 50 percent to K452.0 billion in 2023 from K295.8 billion reported in the preceding period,” Chaaba said.

Meanwhile, Chaaba said the volume of data utilised by consumers of mobile data services increased more than two-fold to 876, 000 terabytes in 2023 from 430, 000 terabytes recorded in 2022.

Consequently, he stated, revenues in the mobile market increased to K9.5 billion in 2023 from K7.8 billion recorded in 2022.

This represented a growth rate of 22.4 percent.

Chaaba noted that mobile data services for the first time accounted for the largest share of mobile revenues consistent with the pattern of utilisation.

“Mobile data consumption has consistently recorded exponential growth rates on the back of heightened social media usage, increased reliance by corporate entities on online platforms as well as its increased application in schooling for research as well as teaching aids.

“Operators continued to investment in both backbone and last mile fibre deployment while the utilisation rates for data centre infrastructure continued to increase,” he said.

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