PawaPay, a pan-African mobile money payments aggregator, has been granted a Payment Service Provider (PSP) licence by the Bank of Mozambique through its local subsidiary, Quidexplus Mozambique, in a move that opens a regulated route for merchants into one of Africa’s most active mobile money markets.
The authorisation, announced on 8 March 2026, makes PawaPay one of the first companies licensed to operate as a PSP under Mozambique’s regulatory framework, allowing it to onboard merchants directly and provide regulated payment services across the country.
A market dominated by e-money
The significance of the licence lies in the unusual structure of Mozambique’s financial system. The country now has three electronic money operators — M-Pesa (Vodacom), e-Mola (Movitel) and mKesh (Tmcel) — which together serve more than 12 million active accounts. According to Bank of Mozambique data, electronic money accounts reached 130.9 per 100 adults in the second quarter of 2026, compared with just 33.8 bank accounts per 100 adults — nearly four times the level of traditional banking penetration.
The growth trajectory is stark. At the end of 2025, e-money accounts stood at 125.8 per 100 adults, rising to 130.9 by mid-2026, while bank accounts remained virtually flat, edging up from 33.7 to 33.8 over the same period. Meanwhile, the physical footprint of traditional banking is contracting: bank branches fell to 3.62 per 100,000 adults, down from 3.76 in 2025, and ATMs declined to 6.43 per 100,000 adults.
By transaction value, mobile wallets processed approximately $14.6 billion between January and October 2025, corresponding to more than 1.3 billion operations in ten months. The digital payments market in Mozambique is projected to grow by 15.28 per cent from 2024 to 2028, reaching a market volume of $9.37 billion by 2028.
The country’s mobile money network now includes nearly half a million agents — 467,622 as of the first quarter of 2026, up 4.4 per cent from the previous quarter — far outpacing the reach of traditional bank infrastructure.
The competitive landscape among the three mobile money operators is shifting. While M-Pesa, launched by Vodacom and backed by Safaricom’s Kenyan model, remains the best-known brand, industry observers note that e-Mola has made significant inroads, particularly outside the capital Maputo. “It’s also hard not to notice how much Movitel’s e-Mola has caught up to M-Pesa since my last visit, particularly outside Maputo in some of the smaller cities,” noted one fintech analyst familiar with the market.
Data from 2025 showed that e-Mola surpassed traditional banks in money movement value, while M-Pesa recorded approximately 546.5 billion meticais across 498 million transactions. Full interoperability between M-Pesa, mKesh and e-Mola has been in place since December 2022, removing friction from cross-network transfers and helping drive everyday usage.
Regulatory modernisation gathers pace
The Bank of Mozambique has been actively overhauling its payments framework. The PSP licensing regime was established under Decree №99/2019, which created the legal framework for payment service providers, with minimum capital requirements set through Aviso №3/GBM/2020. In July 2026, the government approved Law №15/2026, a new National Payment System Law that strengthens the central bank’s supervisory powers, promotes legal certainty and operational soundness, and encourages responsible innovation. Operators were given 180 days to adapt to the new requirements.
Mozambique also launched the METIX instant payment system in March 2026, integrating commercial banks with mobile wallets to enable real-time transfers via website, mobile app and USSD channels — without requiring an internet connection. A regulatory sandbox is expected to accelerate financial innovation in digital payments and savings during 2026.
PawaPay’s continental ambitions
For PawaPay, the Mozambique licence adds to an existing regulated presence across 23 African markets. The London-founded company, which was established in 2020 under CEO Nikolai Barnwell, processes approximately 7 million transactions daily for clients operating in sectors including ride-hailing, remittance, retail and non-governmental organisations.
PawaPay’s transaction volumes have scaled rapidly. It took over four years to reach its first billion mobile money transactions, but the second billion came in under twelve months, and the third billion within nine months. The company has crossed €10 billion ($11.5 billion) in total payments settled to date and now processes over 5 million daily transactions. In 2026, PawaPay was named among CNBC’s World’s Top Fintech Companies.
The company works directly with banks and mobile network operators to support collections, settlement, foreign exchange and reconciliation through a single API — a model that simplifies market entry for global merchants who would otherwise need to build individual connections in each territory.
“Our platform is designed to remove the technical debt of building individual connections in every territory,” Barnwell told the Financial Times. “Mobile money is how hundreds of millions of Africans pay for goods and services every day, but many businesses outside Africa still underestimate both its scale and sophistication. The Mozambique licence is another step toward making that infrastructure accessible to any business that wants to operate here.”
What the licence changes
Until now, limited licensed payment infrastructure has restricted how merchants could operate at scale in Mozambique. The PSP licence allows PawaPay to onboard merchants directly, connecting them to the three mobile money networks their customers already use.
“Mozambique has been one of the most active mobile money markets on the continent for years, but merchants have had no reliable way to operate here at scale,” said Ilídio Matchebe, Mozambique Country Director at PawaPay. “Becoming one of the first PSPs licensed by the Bank of Mozambique changes that.”
The licence enables PawaPay to begin commercial operations immediately, with merchant onboarding expected to begin in the coming days. The company is also in advanced discussions with M-Pesa, e-Mola and international remittance providers around expanding inbound payment flows into Mozambique.
Remittances represent a particularly significant opportunity. Mozambicans abroad have sent more than $500 million in remittances, and mobile money is the primary channel for receiving funds from South Africa, Portugal and other diasporic hubs. PawaPay’s existing partnerships with Airtel Money Africa, which covers seven markets for cross-border remittances, could serve as a template for expanding inbound flows into Mozambique.
Financial inclusion and remaining gaps
The broader context is one of rapid but uneven financial inclusion. Mozambique’s financial inclusion index, calculated by the central bank, is 14.9 under the traditional methodology, rising to 36.5 when mobile money is incorporated — illustrating how profoundly e-money has reshaped access to formal financial services.
Yet significant gaps persist. Electronic money accounts remain strongly concentrated among men, at 144.7 per 100 adult males versus 118.5 per 100 adult females. Among bank accounts, the disparity is even wider: 44.8 per 100 men against 21.8 per 100 women. Rural areas also lag urban centres, with the provinces of Niassa, Cabo Delgado and Manica having the fewest access points per capita.
Bank cards remain used by only 18.3 per 100 adults — well below e-money account penetration — suggesting that formal banking products remain out of reach for much of the adult population.
The entry of a licensed PSP could help address some of these gaps by enabling more merchants to accept digital payments, potentially drawing more users into the formal financial system. However, the extent to which licensing alone drives inclusion — as opposed to deeper structural factors such as device ownership, digital literacy and gender norms — remains contested among development economists.
For PawaPay, the Mozambique licence is as much about positioning as about immediate commercial returns. As Africa’s mobile money market continues to expand — over $1.4 trillion in transactions were processed across the continent last year — aggregators that hold direct licences in multiple jurisdictions are likely to be better placed to capture cross-border payment flows and serve multinational merchants seeking a single integration point.