{"id":403060,"date":"2021-02-27T15:19:21","date_gmt":"2021-02-27T12:19:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/?p=403060"},"modified":"2021-02-27T15:19:21","modified_gmt":"2021-02-27T12:19:21","slug":"somalia-issues-its-first-mobile-money-licence-to-hormuud-telecom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/somalia-issues-its-first-mobile-money-licence-to-hormuud-telecom\/","title":{"rendered":"Somalia issues its first mobile money licence to Hormuud Telecom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"Paragraph-paragraph-2Bgue ArticleBody-para-TD_9x\"><strong>Mogadishu<\/strong> &#8211; Somalia\u2019s central bank awarded on Saturday the country\u2019s first mobile money licence to Mogadishu-based Hormuud Telecom Somalia Inc, a move aimed at formalising the country\u2019s digital payments system and integrating it with the global financial system.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph-paragraph-2Bgue ArticleBody-para-TD_9x\">Hormuud Telecom, which began operating in the Horn of Africa nation in 2002, has some 3.6 million subscribers in Somalia, a country of more than 15 million people, and roughly 3 million people use its mobile money platform EVC Plus.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph-paragraph-2Bgue ArticleBody-para-TD_9x\">By granting Hormuud the licence, EVC Plus will now be subject to central bank regulation, which should boost confidence in the country\u2019s mobile money system, the governor of the monetary authority said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph-paragraph-2Bgue ArticleBody-para-TD_9x\">\u201cIn formalising our existing digital payments infrastructure, we are accelerating the integration of Somalia\u2019s financial system into the global economy,\u201d Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph-paragraph-2Bgue ArticleBody-para-TD_9x\">More than two thirds of all payments made in Somalia are via mobile money platforms, according to Hormuud Telecom, and the licence will help Somalia move towards becoming a cashless economy and tackle widespread counterfeiting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph-paragraph-2Bgue ArticleBody-para-TD_9x\">\u201cThe news today cements what we\u2019ve known for a long time, that Somalia is moving towards being the world\u2019s first truly cashless economy,\u201d said Ahmed Mohamud Yuusuf, Hormuud Telecom\u2019s chief executive.<\/p>\n<div class=\"AdSlot__container___2BqUD ArticleBody-ad-slot-83sCj\"><\/div>\n<p class=\"Paragraph-paragraph-2Bgue ArticleBody-para-TD_9x\">Approximately 155 mobile money million transactions, worth $2.7 billion, are recorded in Somalia per month, according to a 2018 World Bank report.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph-paragraph-2Bgue ArticleBody-para-TD_9x\">\u201cMobile money has superseded the use of cash in Somalia, with over 70% of adult Somalis using mobile money services regularly,\u201d the bank said at the time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph-paragraph-2Bgue ArticleBody-para-TD_9x\">Somalia has been unstable since a civil war broke out in 1991 but the fragile internationally-backed government has been trying to rebuild its institutions and rejoin the global financial system, despite a relentless Islamist insurgency.<\/p>\n<p>Source: Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mogadishu &#8211; Somalia\u2019s central bank awarded on Saturday the country\u2019s first mobile money licence to Mogadishu-based Hormuud Telecom Somalia Inc, a move aimed at formalising the country\u2019s digital payments system and integrating it with the global financial system. Hormuud Telecom, which began operating in the Horn of Africa nation in 2002, has some 3.6 million [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":403061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-403060","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403060"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":403062,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403060\/revisions\/403062"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}