ELECTRONIC MONEY : Gimac’s Transactions Reach 224 Billion FCFA in 2022
In a report published on November 7 by the Bank of Central African States (Beac) Gimac has reached over 200 billion FCFA in 2022. The report is contained in the payment services of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (Cemac).
In 2022, the Interbank and Electronic Money Grouping of Central Africa (Gimac) processed more than 7.3 million electronic money transactions for an amount exceeding 224.1 billion FCFA. This amount has been multiplied by 10 in comparison with 2020, year during which, the interoperable transactions amounted to 1.1 million operations for an amount of 21.08 billion FCFA, according to data published by the Beac.
« Interoperability through Gimac has progressed, allowing Cemac citizens from all countries to send and receive funds through electronic money operations, as well as to pay for goods and services », argues Beac. Indeed, Gimac processed 6.06 million money transfer operations for an amount of 133.8 billion FCFA, or almost 60 % of the value of the global transactions processed.
These transactions were mostly made via Mobile Money at 73% and the rest made up of delegate cards (11 %) and interconnection cards (16 %). In terms of value, Beac reports these proportions increase to 55 % for Mobile and 45 % for cards. Interbank withdrawals (via GimacPay) reached 1.3 million transactions worth 96.1 billion FCFA in 2022, according to the same source.
This increase in transactions is due to the introduction of the Gimac Pay platform in 2020. It is an ecosystem processing credit card transactions and integrating Mobile Money transactions between different mobile phone operators operating in the Cemac, banks and microfinances that have a mobile wallet backed by bank accounts. As of December 31, 2022, the Gimac Pay network had 89 participants, including 53 banking institutions, 10 microfinance institutions, 11 Mobile Money operators, a public Treasury and 14 aggregators.
With a capital of 3.5 billion FCFA and 99 % owned by Beac, Gimac’s mission is to promote, provide, supervise and regulate electronic payment services. This grouping, based in the central services of the central bank in Yaoundé, nevertheless remains a dwarf in terms of processing electronic money transactions with market shares of barely 1 % in a market valued in 2022 at 23,332 billion FCFA by the Beac.
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