Addressing Competition Bottlenecks in Digital Financial Ecosystems

Abstract

Despite some early success, the mobile money sector’s future remains unclear. In some markets, few dominant players have managed to grow significantly. Their dominant position often reduces incentives to lower prices or even hampers the ability of other players to compete. This paper offers a framework to help policy makers, regulators and the financial inclusion community to think about anti-competitive behaviours in digital financial ecosystems, and ways to address these bottlenecks without stifling market growth.

Keywords: mobile money, competition bottlenecks, competition authority, telecommunications regulator, Central Bank, monopoly