Beyond the Card-Centric View of Digital Commerce
For decades, international digital commerce has largely been designed around a familiar assumption: consumers pay with cards. That assumption works well in many markets. But it is far from universal.
Across parts of Africa and other emerging digital economies, millions of consumers interact with financial services primarily through their mobile phones. Rather than entering card credentials at checkout, users can store value, transfer money, pay merchants and access an expanding range of financial services through mobile money accounts. The scale of this ecosystem is now difficult to describe as “alternative”.
According to the GSMA’s State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money 2026, the industry reached 2.3 billion registered accounts and 593 million monthly active accounts in 2025. More than $2.1 trillion flowed through mobile money during the year, roughly double the annual transaction value reached just four years earlier (GSMA – State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money 2026)
For merchants, these figures point to an important shift. Mobile money should not simply be understood as a solution for consumers without cards. In many markets, it is already part of everyday financial behaviour.
And when a payment method becomes embedded in everyday behavior, it can become a powerful entry point for digital commerce.
Mobile Money Is Becoming a Commerce Ecosystem
The origins of mobile money were closely connected to financial inclusion: providing access to basic financial services where traditional banking infrastructure was limited. That role remains fundamental. But the ecosystem has evolved considerably.
Today’s mobile money services increasingly connect consumers with merchants, banks, governments, remittance providers and other parts of the digital economy. One figure illustrates that evolution particularly well.
In 2025, merchant payments through mobile money grew by 42% to $155 billion, making merchant payments the industry’s fastest-growing use case, according to the GSMA.
That growth changes the conversation for digital merchants. A mobile money wallet is no longer simply somewhere consumers receive or transfer funds. It increasingly represents a payment environment through which businesses can establish commercial relationships with users.
For digital services, the implications are significant. Streaming, sports content, gaming, education and other digital products can reach audiences whose preferred financial experience may not involve entering a card number at all.
The question therefore becomes less about how to persuade those users to adopt traditional online payment behaviours and more about how merchants can adapt their monetization journeys to behaviours that already exist.
Africa Shows Why Local Payment Behaviour Matters
Nowhere is that transformation more visible than in Sub-Saharan Africa. The region has played a defining role in the development of mobile money, creating ecosystems in which mobile payments have become deeply integrated into everyday economic activity.
The World Bank’s Global Findex 2025 shows that overall account ownership in Sub-Saharan Africa reached 58% of adults in 2024, up from 49% in 2021, with the World Bank highlighting mobile money as a major contributor to financial inclusion in the region. It also notes that mobile money usage in Sub-Saharan Africa remains the highest in the world (World Bank – Global Findex 2025 findings)
But “Africa” should not be treated as a single payment market. Payment behaviour, regulation, wallet penetration and consumer purchasing power vary significantly between countries.
A strategy that works in Ivory Coast may not translate directly to Senegal, Kenya or Nigeria. Different markets have different wallet leaders, different levels of interoperability and different expectations around how consumers authenticate and complete transactions.
This is exactly why local expertise matters. For international merchants, entering these markets cannot simply mean adding “Mobile Money” as another generic checkout option. It requires understanding which wallets consumers actually use, how payment flows operate locally, what price points make sense, and how the commercial proposition should be adapted to local purchasing behaviour.
The product may be global. The monetization model often needs to be local. And here is where Digital Virgo’s glocal approach makes a real difference.
Monetization Goes Beyond Payment Availability
There is another important lesson from mobile money: enabling a payment method does not automatically create a profitable digital service. The payment rail removes one barrier. The rest of the monetization equation still needs to work.
For digital services, this means aligning the product proposition, acquisition strategy, pricing and payment experience with local market conditions.
A price point designed for a European card subscriber may be inappropriate for a mobile-money user in West Africa. Similarly, a monetization model based purely on maximizing acquisition volume may perform differently from one designed around increasing the value generated from each active customer.
This makes pricing particularly important. Merchants need to understand what users are willing to pay, how frequently they are comfortable paying, and whether different tiers of access can increase value without introducing unnecessary friction.
At Digital Virgo, our experience with mobile-money-based digital content reinforces this point. In markets such as Ivory Coast and Senegal, mobile wallets already provide a route for users to purchase access to digital entertainment, including live football content. The learning is not simply that consumers can pay with mobile money; it is that sustainable performance depends on continuously optimizing the complete monetization journey, from acquisition and pricing to payment and content value.
This is why mobile money should be approached as a monetization strategy rather than simply a technical integration.
From Access to Active Financial Behaviour
Another important evolution is happening inside the mobile money ecosystem itself. Growth is no longer measured purely by the number of accounts created. Usage matters increasingly more.
The GSMA reports that the global 30-day mobile money activity rate reached 25.7% in 2025, its highest level since 2021, while the number of monthly active accounts rose to 593 million.
This distinction matters for merchants. A registered payment account represents potential reach. An actively used account represents payment behaviour.
As consumers use mobile money more frequently, and for a broader range of purposes, the opportunity for merchants expands beyond occasional transactions. The ecosystem begins to support longer-term commercial relationships.
That evolution is already visible in the broader financial behaviour surrounding mobile money. The World Bank reports that 10% of adults in developing economies used a mobile money account to save in 2024, twice the share recorded in 2021.
Mobile money is therefore becoming more deeply embedded in users’ financial lives. For digital merchants, that creates a stronger foundation for commerce.
The Next Opportunity: Building Digital Services Around Wallet-First Consumers
For premium merchants, perhaps the most interesting question is what happens next.
Hundreds of millions of consumers now actively use mobile money. Merchant payment volumes are accelerating. Wallet ecosystems are expanding beyond basic transfers. And digital consumption continues to grow across emerging markets.
The opportunity is no longer simply to “reach the unbanked.” That framing understates the market. The opportunity is to design digital services for wallet-first consumers.
These users may consume the same entertainment, education, gaming or digital services as customers elsewhere in the world, while expecting a very different payment experience.
Successful monetization therefore requires merchants to connect three elements: Relevant digital products. Local payment behaviour. Appropriate commercial models.
When those elements align, mobile money can become more than a checkout option. It becomes an enabler of market expansion.
Scaling Mobile Money Without Scaling Complexity
There is, however, a structural challenge. Mobile money is inherently local.
Different markets contain different wallet providers, technical environments, regulations and commercial models. Expanding country by country through separate integrations can quickly create the same fragmentation merchants experience when managing multiple Local Payment Methods elsewhere.
Aggregation can simplify access, while direct integrations may provide advantages in markets where greater control, stability or local optimization is required.
There is no universal model. The appropriate architecture depends on the market.
This is where the broader payment strategy we have explored throughout this series becomes particularly relevant.
Cards, Direct Carrier Billing, mobile wallets and Local Payment Methods should not be treated as competing solutions. They provide different routes to monetization depending on who the customer is, where they are located and how they prefer to pay.
At Digital Virgo, our approach combines this multi-payment perspective with local market execution.
Our mobile money footprint already includes markets in West Africa, while the opportunity extends toward major wallet ecosystems in markets such as Kenya and Nigeria. The objective is not simply to accumulate wallet integrations, but to build the payment and monetization capabilities needed to help digital merchants reach consumers through the methods that make sense locally.
That requires payment connectivity. But it also requires acquisition expertise, pricing optimization, local knowledge and an understanding of how digital services perform after the payment method has been activated.
Beyond Cards Does Not Mean Against Cards
The rise of mobile money tells a broader story about the future of digital payments.
Cards remain essential to global commerce. Direct Carrier Billing remains exceptionally effective for certain mobile-first experiences. Bank-based Local Payment Methods are transforming markets such as Brazil and Poland.
Mobile money adds another powerful layer. The lesson for merchants is not that one payment method will replace another.
It is that global monetization increasingly depends on understanding which payment method is relevant to which customer.
In some markets, the answer will be cards. In others, it may be DCB. And for hundreds of millions of increasingly active consumers, it is already the wallet on their mobile phone.
For digital merchants looking toward the next wave of international growth, recognizing that reality may be the difference between simply making a service available in a market, and actually making it monetizable.
