Ethiopia Has 157 Million Mobile Money Accounts But Less Than 15% Are Active, NBE Admits

Betegbar Yaregal

#EBR_News Aug 17, 2026

Ethiopia has 157 million registered mobile money accounts, but less than 15% of accounts across the country’s digital financial channels are active, according to the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE).

Solomon Damtew Metaferia, Director of the Banking and Payment Systems Directorate at the NBE, disclosed the figures while speaking at the 29th Connected Banking Summit and Innovation and Excellence Awards 2026 in Addis Ababa on Wednesday.

Solomon said activation rates vary across digital financial channels, with mobile banking recording relatively higher usage while mobile money and agent-based accounts have lower activation rates. Overall, however, the activation rate remains below 15%, indicating a significant gap between account registration and actual use.

He also pointed to continued gaps in access to financial services, particularly between urban and rural areas. According to Solomon, women in rural areas still travel an average of six hours to access basic banking services.

The NBE is seeking to address these challenges through the National Digital Payments Strategy 2.0. Solomon said the first National Digital Payments Strategy helped establish the digital financial ecosystem, introduce non-bank financial service providers and build interoperability infrastructure. Ethiopia now has more than 35 non-bank digital financial service providers, he said.

Digital transaction volumes have also increased significantly. According to Solomon, transactions across Ethiopia’s financial ecosystem reached 33 trillion Br in the current fiscal year, compared with 4.7 trillion Br in mid 2023 and 240 billion Br in 2020.

The NBE’s strategy includes developing a Digital Public Infrastructure framework by 2030, consisting of real-time payment infrastructure, a national digital identity and trust layer, and a data exchange layer.

The strategy also includes open APIs, cloud platforms, a common fraud compensation fund and plans covering central bank digital currency, virtual assets, stable coins and tokenization.

The NBE’s focus is therefore shifting from expanding the number of digital accounts to increasing their actual use and improving access to digital financial services, particularly among underserved groups.