Competition in mobile financial services : lessons from Kenya and Tanzania

Mobile financial services (MFS) are the main drivers of financial inclusion in many developing countries; they provide low-income consumers with access to transfers, payments, and increasingly more complex products such as credit, savings, and insurance. To promote both quality and diversity in MFS products, and in turn financial inclusion, it is important to ensure a competitive ecosystem that facilitates entry into the market, the development of innovative MFS products, and high-quality, value-for-money services. This working paper aims to provide insights on the role that effective competition and competition policy play in developing MFS, and in turn promoting financial inclusion using Kenya and Tanzania as case countries. There have been several important competition-relevant policy developments recently in both Kenya and Tanzania that highlight how maturing MFS markets can begin to establish an ecosystem that better supports free and fair competition. These developments have represented important inflection points in both markets on key competition issues for MFS and offer initial insights on how to promote effective competition in MFS markets and what role policy makers may play in this.