[Photo: Financial Times]
A report by the Global System for Mobile Communications Association says more than 8 million Kenyans use other people’s mobile money accounts to send and receive cash.
“The proportion of mobile money account owners in Kenya who have accounts registered under their names stands at 88 per cent,” reads part of the report.
This makes it difficult to track those behind illegal multi-billion shilling transactions.
This mainly happens where users are underage transacting with other people’s accounts, those who have lost identification cards and cannot register their lines, or where criminals create multiple accounts to cheat the system.
According to the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK), the country had 67.94 million operational mobile money accounts as of February 2022.
CBK says the number is bigger than the country’s entire population of 53.7 million.
This comes as the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) has ordered fresh sim card registration exercise before the deadline in October.