On April 15^th 2020, Abbas Mahamat Tolli, Governor of the BEAC published a release which shows that the Bank of Central African States-BEAC has said that; mobile money interoperability is now effective in the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa-CEMAC region.  

The interoperability permits a mobile money wallet holder to directly transfer money to the wallet of another user even if they are not clients of the same mobile operator. It is the result of works being done, since 2019, by the banking and e-payment sectors.  

According to him, this method will help prevent the spread of the COVID-19 since it reduces physical cash transactions. The Governor on the release asked CEMAC residents to opt for this payment method available throughout the sub-region.

The interoperability, he stated, is also a real revolution in the payment system the region.

Close sources say that in accordance to the official launch means that transactions can be carried out directly between bank accounts, mobile money wallets, and bank cards from now on.

Many people are questioning the difference from what have been existing and the present because these direct transactions were possible in the past. But the difference is that there was no common interoperability platform. Therefore, the process was arduous.

The interoperability has for instance limit the condition that, when an MTN Cameroon user sends a mobile money payment to an Orange Cameroon subscriber, the latter had to go to an MTN collection point within three days or the transaction would be canceled.

 However, with the new platform, the payment is directly transferred into the Orange Cameroon user’s mobile money wallet.

The method will face restriction because some of the parties involved lack the required technology which is already limiting its adoption.

Nevertheless, the release did not clarify if local transfers will incur the same fees as regional transactions.