On 9 April, a webinar organized by AFI and GSMA explored how mobile money certification can build and maintain trust in the financial ecosystem.

The GSMA Mobile Money Certification (MMC) is an industry-driven, voluntary initiative which goes beyond basic regulatory compliance to incorporate a wide range of responsible business practices. The webinar familiarized regulators with the MMC’s core principles, which include safeguarding funds, AML/CFT, data privacy, and system security, mapping them to key supervisory outcomes such as trust, integrity, and consumer protection. Participants learnt from the experiences of a scheme operator (Certi-Trust) and a certified mobile money provider (Safaricom, M-PESA).

“Certification offers regulators an additional, credible source of assurance, helping them to assess whether providers are meeting high standards in the areas that matter most,” said Kennedy Kipkemboi, GSMA Director of Public Policy and Advocacy. “It improves comparability across providers (including across borders), supports more focused supervisory dialogue, and enables more responsible partnerships across the ecosystem. Ultimately, it helps build and sustain trust—trust from customers, from regulators, and across the financial ecosystem. It should not be mandated—its strength lies precisely in its voluntary nature, which encourages genuine commitment rather than mere compliance.”

The GSMA, a global organization uniting over 1,000 mobile operators and businesses, is a global partner for AFI’s Public-Private Dialogue (PPD) platform.

You can learn more about GSMA Mobile Money Certification in the video below: