The GSMA has received an additional US$9.8 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The MasterCard Foundation and Omidyar Network to continue with its Mobile Money for the Unbanked (MMU) programme over the next three years.  The GSMA also announced the results of its Global Mobile Money Adoption Survey for 2011 which showed there are now at least 60 million registered mobile money users globally.  

The survey also revealed that eleven mobile money services have more than one million registered customers and together account for 85 percent of the 60 million-plus figure. Also the survey shows that three of the eight fast-growing services are offered by mobile operators with less than 25 percent share of the wider mobile market. This finding is interesting because it is sometimes said that mobile money services can only be really successful if introduced by a mobile operator with a dominant market share. The survey also revealed that the most popular payment transactions were airtime top-ups which represented 68 percent of all functional transactions with P2P transfers in second place (27 percent). View the full report here.