EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: The CEO of South Africa-based Fundamo – acquired by Visa earlier this month for US$110 million – believes that mobile money services should be available to one billion people in the next five years if the industry is to achieve its full potential. In an interview with Mobile World Live, Hannes van Rensburg said the market is “coming of age… growing out of a teenager into an adult,” but “has only activated five percent of what is possible… we need to get that up to twenty percent.” Van Rensburg commented: “You know if we look at the deployments that are active in the world today then mobile money is available to roughly three hundred million people, maybe three hundred and fifty million people. In the next four to five years we’ve got to take that up to a billion people. I think that’s achievable, I think we can do that. Of that three hundred and fifty million people, around fifty [million] or less, thirty-five million people, have activated the services… you know [that’s] very low penetration.”

Fundamo has more than 50 deployments in over 40 countries, including 27 countries in Africa and the Middle East and another 10 globally. It currently serves more than 5 million registered subscribers, primarily focused in developing economies. Fundamo’s platform enables the delivery of mobile financial services to unbanked and under-banked consumers – including person-to-person payment, airtime top-up, bill payment and branchless banking services. View the full video interview with van Rensburg (conducted before the Visa announcement was released) here.