Digital wallet transactions increase fourfold, users up 53%
More than $110 mil. in transactions during 2021
Digital wallets registered more than $110 million in transactions during 2021, a fourfold increase over the previous year, showing exponential growth in the emerging payments segment.
The Central Bank of The Bahamas (CBOB) in its 2021 Annual Report revealed that overall, the total number of e-money users expanded in 2021 by 53 percent to 54,968 personal accounts. Business accounts more than doubled to 396 from 130 in 2020.
“Electronic money service providers (EMSPs) represent an emerging segment of the payments arena, evidencing steady gains since the Central Bank began collecting data in 2019. The number of providers remained at seven during 2021, however, supported by 19 percent fewer agents (213 in total). Meanwhile, both the volume and value of top-up transactions to mobile wallet accounts rose nearly fourfold to 1.5 million and $111 million, respectively. The expansion was attributed to greater adoption by consumers and merchants utilizing electronic money services, as well as the use of payment services institutions to channel disbursement of pandemic-related social assistance payments from the government,” the annual report states.
