The Bank of Tanzania has said new legislation to govern money transfers through mobile phones is being put together.
The legislation seeks to provide a legal framework for the electronic money payments and transfer services, including those provided by mobile phone companies, according to the Central Bank’s legal counsel George Sije, as reported by the Daily News.
“We see the goodwill of the government on this and we hope the new law can be passed within this fiscal year,” said Sije, who also said a bill for the proposed new National Payment Systems Act (NPSA) was scheduled for first reading in the current parliamentary session at a Bank of Tanzania (BoT) seminar held to highlight its activities to media.
The mobile transaction services have had a wide reach to multiple people who had no access to the financial services before.
There are 25 million accounts for M-Pesa, Tigo Pesa, Airtel Money and Easy Pesa services of the four biggest mobile operators in the country, according to Bank of Tanzania’s data.
At least one transaction is made a month by the nine million people who are active users of their accounts, with 40,000 agents to deliver the services countrywide.
