ABA Editorial Board · Mar 22, 2026 · 10 min read
Mobile money in Africa runs on a foundation of approximately 300,000 M-Pesa agents, several hundred thousand more across Nigerian operators, and uncounted thousands more across the continent. Practitioners inside the sector have started to whisper about something industry reports do not yet capture: the agent economics that made mobile money work are quietly deteriorating. If this pattern holds, the consequences for African digital finance are significant.
Everything in African digital finance ultimately runs on cash-in cash-out agents. When a Nairobi worker receives her salary to an M-Pesa wallet and wants to use it at a market that does not accept digital payments, an agent turns her digital balance into physical cash. When a Lagos retailer wants to deposit the day's cash takings into an OPay account, an agent runs the deposit. When a Ugandan farmer receives a remittance from a relative abroad, an agent is the last mile that delivers the cash. There are approximately 298,890 Safaricom M-Pesa agents in Kenya alone as of the FY25 disclosures, with hundreds of thousands more operating across Nigerian, Ghanaian, Ugandan, Tanzanian, and other African markets. These agents are the physical infrastructure that makes African mobile money actually work, and their economics are now quietly deteriorating in ways that practitioners in the sector have been discussing privately for at least eighteen months.
Agent commissions are set by mobile money operators. Agent operating costs are set by the local economy in which each agent works. When agent commissions stay flat or decline while operating costs rise, agent profitability shrinks, and agents either leave the business, reduce the cash balance they make available to customers, or start rejecting low-margin transactions entirely. All three of these patterns have been observed in multiple African markets in 2024 and 2025, and experienced mobile money product managers have been raising concerns internally without those concerns making it into public sector reporting.
The operating cost side of the equation is straightforward. Rent, security, electricity, mobile data, and the cost of physical cash float have all increased in most African markets. Currency depreciation has made it harder for agents operating in import-dependent local economies to maintain working capital. Fraud-related losses, which agents typically bear directly, have increased as mobile money fraud schemes have become more sophisticated. The margin side of the equation has moved in the opposite direction. Mobile money operators have been under pressure from investors to improve their own margins, and one of the most reliable ways to do that is to squeeze the commission structure paid to agents. Several major African mobile money operators have adjusted their commission tiers downward in the last two years, usually quietly and without public announcement.
Senior field staff at African mobile money operators have been consistent in their private observations. Agent retention rates are declining in several markets. The fraction of agents who operate a mobile money business as a standalone operation rather than as a side activity to a retail shop or phone accessories stall has fallen, because standalone agent economics no longer support the operating overhead. The fraction of registered agents who are effectively inactive (technically licensed but doing little or no business) has risen. And customer complaints about agent unavailability or insufficient agent cash float have increased in multiple markets, which is the visible consequence of agents being unable or unwilling to maintain the working capital they need to serve customer demand.
None of this has yet produced a crisis that regulators or senior executives at mobile money operators have been willing to discuss publicly. What it has produced is a growing awareness inside the sector that the foundation of African mobile money is less stable than the sector's public narrative suggests. Practitioners who have worked in Kenyan, Nigerian, and Ghanaian mobile money operations for a decade or more tell us they have not seen agent economics this stressed since the very early years of M-Pesa before the Safaricom commission structure was fully worked out.
Every African consumer fintech depends, directly or indirectly, on agent networks. A Kuda customer who wants to deposit cash into her account uses an agent somewhere in the chain, even if she does not realize it. A Cowrywise user funding a savings goal is relying on the same infrastructure. A Lipa Later customer making a BNPL repayment through M-Pesa is relying on the agent who converted her cash into digital balance. If agent economics deteriorate to the point where agents start leaving the sector at scale, the customer experience of every African fintech will degrade simultaneously. This is not a hypothetical risk. It is the direct consequence of the pattern that practitioners are already observing in smaller and less visible ways.
Three things, in our view, should be on the agenda of every major African mobile money operator right now. First, a transparent review of agent commission structures with an honest assessment of whether current rates support sustainable agent operations in today's cost environment. Second, serious investment in agent-focused working capital products, including credit lines specifically designed to help agents maintain cash float through periods of currency volatility. Third, explicit policies that distinguish between agents who are doing real business and agents who exist only on paper, so that the active agent base is understood accurately rather than inflated by counting inactive registrations.
Regulators should be asking their own questions. Central banks that supervise mobile money operators should be requesting reporting on agent economics, retention rates, and commission structures, not just on transaction volumes and customer counts. The GSMA State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money already tracks some agent-related metrics, but the deterioration we are describing would only show up in finer-grained data that currently is not collected systematically.
And investors in African consumer fintech should be asking their portfolio companies a pointed question: what happens to the customer experience if agent availability drops by 20 percent in your main market over the next two years? If the answer is "we have not modeled that scenario," the investment thesis is missing a structural risk that practitioners inside the sector have already started worrying about. Mobile money agents are the unglamorous infrastructure that makes the whole African fintech story possible. The time to recognize that their economics are breaking is before, not after, the breakage becomes visible to customers.