Africa’s versatile mobile money market is pulling in a major hitter. Global payments giants, Mastercard on Thursday reported investing $100 million into Airtel Africa’s cash transfer unit, which allows clients to send each other cash by means of cell phone handsets. The arrangement esteems the division, which works in 14 nations, at $2.65 billion, over 33% of its parent’s enterprise total value.
The valuation of multiple times the unit’s normal EBITDA this year, contrasted and the multiple times different at which its parent exchanges, may provoke other African media communications administrators to go diving for esteem in their portable cash coffers. By a similar measuring stick M-Pesa, the spearheading mobile payments offering possessed by $13 billion Kenyan administrator Safaricom, would be valued at $4 billion, expecting income of $660 million this year and an EBITDA edge like Airtel’s 49%. With the continent’s cell phone market getting saturated, administrators see sense in hopping on the mobile payments markets thundering round the globe.
