MTN’s Mobile Money service has been the industry leader in mobile payment platforms since its inception in the late 2000s. Over the years, despite the other telcos coming out with their versions of mobile wallets, MTN Mobile Money continues to dominate.
However, the landscape has changed over time with the emergence of banking apps and other standalone forms of payment. The latest to enter that space is G-Money from GCB Bank. It comes with some innovation to the features of already existing services — as well as some new ones of its own. With Ghana’s fintech sector looking to grow beyond what it currently is, can G-Money offer that edge that customers and businesses seek in mobile payment platforms?
A comprehensive comparison between the two platforms is what this article seeks to provide for you, the dear reader so if you’d like to know how these two fare against each other, and what unique bits they offer, stay around and read on.
Table of contents
G-Money or MTN Mobile Money: The case
MTN Mobile Money
MTN MoMo is Ghanaian fintech’s flagship mobile wallet provider. Indeed, as the parent company’s slogan says, it is “everywhere you go.” On an average day, three out of five people you send an e-wallet payment to would be using MTN MoMo. And their agents as well are everywhere.
However, while all the above are positives, all is not rosy on the MoMo side of life. From the Mobile Money fraud that has bedeviled the service for years now to unreliable network connection every now and then; there’s much that can be done to make the service much better than it currently is. Let’s take a proper look at the positives and not-so-good bits of MTN MoMo below.
Related: 5 Ways MoMo fraudsters get your name and number
MTN MoMo Pros
- You only need your existing MTN mobile phone number to register an account.
- You can pay utility bills and school fees with MoMo.
- Transfer money from your bank account into your MoMo account, and vice versa if you have your mobile number linked to your bank account.
- MoMo is in partnership with Western Union and other fund transfer companies to enable international remittances.
- There’s an abundance of agents to make deposits or withdrawals from. Unless you’re living deep into a new or undeveloped settlement, you wouldn’t have to look too far to locate your nearest agent.
- Local businesses widely accept MTN Mobile Money as a mode of payment for goods and services.
- Internationally, you can make payments on Google’s Play Store with MTN MoMo.
MoMo Cons
- Network downtime can be frustratingly disruptive to users of the service.
- Getting customer service to attend to your grievances can be an unpleasant ordeal.
- MTN Mobile Money is overrun by fraudsters who take advantage of the network’s seemingly unresponsiveness to take advantage of the service’s users.
Related: Does MTN deserve the blame for MoMo fraud?
G-Money
G-Money is an industry-first when it comes to mobile payment platforms operated from within the banking sector. With the G-Money wallet, you get to make fund transfers to receivers across e-wallet platforms, purchase mobile airtime at no additional cost to you, and also payments for utility bills as well as school tuition fee payments.
Another cool feature of this platform is that you can link your personal bank account to the wallet; enabling you to perform wallet to bank, and bank to wallet transactions.
G-Money Pros
- Being able to link mobile wallets with bank accounts means that businesses can receive payments directly into their account for record-keeping sake.
- The group services feature allows you to create groups so as to be able to receive dues, or contributions for social causes, or simply, fundraising.
- You can make transactions via POS (Point Of Sale) devices, and Automated Teller Machines (ATMs).
- You can generate vouchers for yourself as well as others — in order to perform transactions on the platform.
- It is very secure and you wouldn’t have to deal with fraudsters trying to play a quick one on you.
- It is accessible even to people who aren’t GCB Bank customers.
G-Money Cons
- Relatively new, and is therefore not adequately represented on the ground. In other words, does not have enough agents to be regarded as properly visible. For this same reason (being relatively new), there haven’t been enough people coming out to point out flaws within the system to be addressed by the relevant authorities.
To conclude…
Both platforms have their strengths and weaknesses. For MTN MoMo, its longevity in the sector should have given it enough data and time to be able to counter the issues that plague its users. Specifically speaking to the fraud issues bothering subscribers, MTN could build on the goodwill of the people, that despite its flaws, people are still willing to do business with them as always.
G-Money, on the other hand, has started well. The platform is accessible in so many other ways. This makes it a worthy opponent to MTN MoMo, and it’ll be interesting what the future holds for these two.
As it stands now, MTN slightly has the upper hand. It has its longevity and innovative track record to draw on. However, G-Money is looking to be disruptive with what it has to offer — and that is what could propel it into being the forerunner of the future.