The most valuable money in a mobile wallet may be the money that never moves.
At the end of 2025, Orange Money and MTN MoMo held CFA473 billion in Cameroonian banks. Not money in transit: money parked, on behalf of millions of people who keep a balance on their phones.
The banks paid interest on it. CFA21.5 billion in 2025.
The people whose money it was got nothing.
The pile
Every franc a customer loads into a wallet has to sit somewhere real. Under the CEMAC regulation on payment services, adopted in December 2018, an operator must deposit it in a dedicated bank account by the next day, and may not spend it on its own operations or lend it out.
At the end of 2025, Orange Money owed its customers CFA162.3 billion and held CFA193 billion in those accounts. MTN MoMo owed CFA229.3 billion and held CFA280 billion. Both kept more than they owed: 119% and 122%.
Through the 2 wallets moved CFA32.667 trillion in 2025, up 13.7%. Most of it passes through in hours. What stays behind is the float.
The rule
The same regulation decides who earns on that float, and it decides twice.
Article 54: the bank pays the interest to the payment institution.
Article 9: the payment institution may not pay interest to users on the money they hold as e-money.
In 2025, by the figures in the CNEF’s annual report, built on data from the banking supervisor COBAC, Orange Money reported CFA9.9 billion of interest income and MTN MoMo CFA11.6 billion.
What that adds to their profit, the report does not say. It gives no costs, no taxes, no accounting detail. It is a revenue line, not a margin.
The banks
On the other side of every account is a bank that wants the deposit.
Orange spreads its float across 9 banks. AFG Bank Cameroon holds the most, CFA56.9 billion. MTN’s largest holder is CCA Bank, with CFA58.5 billion. On Orange’s accounts, the rates ran from 3% at BICEC to 6.6% at BGFIBank.
For some banks, the float is no side business. Access Bank holds CFA60.4 billion for the 2 operators: 22.2% of all its deposits. At Ecobank it is CFA74.1 billion, 16.1%.
In Cameroon, a growing share of bank funding now arrives by phone.
The neighbor
Next door, the pile is about to grow. From 2nd November 2026, West Africa’s central bank, the BCEAO, doubles the most a person may hold with 1 e-money issuer, from 2 million to 4 million FCFA, and lifts monthly reloads from 10 million to 15 million.
Its rule on where the float sits is tighter. At least 65% must stay in bank accounts that are available immediately. The rest may go only to banks, microfinance institutions, or government and listed securities.
A bigger pile. A tighter leash.
The license
Read as a business, the lesson is plain. In mobile money, the money that moves earns fees. The money that sits earns interest, and in Central Africa the rule sends that interest to whoever holds the payment license.
For a founder building payments in the region, that changes the math of getting licensed. At the rates the banks paid Orange in 2025, every CFA1 billion of average balances would earn between CFA30 million and CFA66 million a year, before a single fee is charged.
It also makes the float a bargaining chip. 9 banks hold Orange’s money at rates more than 2 times apart. An operator with a growing balance gets to choose its bank, and the bank will compete for it.
Nigeria shows the other road. There, OPay stopped waiting for its float to earn and started lending: loans brought in $236.1 million in the first half of 2026, 50.6% of its revenue, up from 35% in 2024.
Same wallet. 2 ways to make it pay.
Everyone in mobile money fights over the transfer.
The quieter money is in the balance nobody spends.
