Ethiopia’s Digital Payments Surge 137×, But the Bigger Story Is How People Use Them

Ethiopia’s digital payments ecosystem has undergone a dramatic transformation in just six years, with the value of transactions reaching 33 trillion birr in the current fiscal year—roughly 137 times the 240 billion birr recorded in 2020.

But the headline figure tells only part of the story.

The faster growth in transaction value compared with the expansion of digital accounts suggests that Ethiopia’s digital finance market is moving beyond simply bringing more people into the system. Existing users are increasingly using digital platforms more frequently and for larger-value transactions.

The figure, disclosed by Solomon Damtew, Director of the Banking and Payment Systems Directorate at the National Bank of Ethiopia, at the 29th Connected Banking Summit in Addis Ababa, represents a nearly sevenfold increase from the 4.7 trillion birr processed in 2023.

That trajectory puts Ethiopia’s digital payments market among the fastest-changing components of the country’s financial system.

The Numbers Behind the Surge

Indicator	Earlier level	Current level	Change
Digital transaction value	ETB 240B (2020)	ETB 33T	137×
Digital transaction value	ETB 4.7T (2023)	ETB 33T	7×
Mobile money accounts	12.2M (2020)	157M	12.9×
Digital payment agents	—	500,000+	—

The expansion has been supported by policy liberalisation, investment in payment infrastructure and rapid consumer adoption.

Mobile money accounts have increased from 12.2 million in 2020 to 157 million today, while the number of agents providing digital financial services has surpassed 500,000.

Yet the relationship between accounts and transaction value is becoming more important than the raw number of accounts.

If transaction values continue to rise faster than account numbers, it would indicate that digital payments are becoming increasingly embedded in everyday commercial activity rather than functioning primarily as a tool for first-time financial access.

That shift could have important implications for banks, fintech companies and payment providers competing to capture transactions across Ethiopia’s rapidly expanding digital economy.

From Access to Usage

Platforms including Telebirr, CBE Birr and M-Pesa, alongside mobile and internet banking applications operated by commercial banks, have expanded the channels available for digital payments.

Telebirr alone has more than 58 million registered users, according to the figures presented at the summit.

The next challenge is therefore not simply increasing registrations. It is increasing active usage.

That means expanding digital payments into merchant transactions, e-commerce, government services, business-to-business payments and other areas where cash remains dominant.

Solomon said the NBE is building a broader Digital Public Infrastructure architecture combining three major layers: a real-time payment system, a national identity and trust layer, and a data exchange layer.

The central bank aims to complete the broader infrastructure by 2030.

Digital Payments as Economic Infrastructure

The NBE is also increasingly framing payment infrastructure as an economic development tool rather than simply a financial-sector technology.

Solomon cited research indicating that a 1 percent increase in digital payments is associated with a 0.1 percent increase in GDP per capita.

The argument is that more efficient payments can reduce transaction costs, improve access to financial services, support businesses and increase the speed at which money moves through the economy.

For Ethiopia, the stakes are particularly significant because the digital payment transformation is taking place alongside broader financial-sector reforms.

The country’s payment ecosystem is moving toward greater interoperability, more private-sector participation, and increasingly sophisticated digital infrastructure.

But rapid growth also creates new risks.

As transaction values reach tens of trillions of birr, cybersecurity, fraud prevention, consumer protection, system resilience and data security become increasingly important. A disruption affecting a major payment platform can now have consequences far beyond individual users.

The next phase of Ethiopia’s digital payment revolution will therefore be measured not only by how much money moves digitally, but by how often people use digital payments, what they use them for, and how reliably the infrastructure supports that activity.

The jump from 240 billion birr in 2020 to 33 trillion birr today shows how far the ecosystem has come. The more consequential question is whether Ethiopia can turn that extraordinary growth in transaction value into deeper digital economic participation.

Source:EBR