WAEMU Mandates Free Transfers and 0.8% Fee Cap, Reshaping West Africa's $267B Mobile Money Market

Three-quarters of all mobile money transactions in West Africa are now free by law. That's the BCEAO's own figure — 75 per cent of transfers fall under the 8,000 CFA franc daily threshold where providers can charge nothing.

The thing is, that's exactly where operators made their money. The pricing that built Orange Money and Wave's volumes wasn't on big transfers — it was the small, frequent ones ordinary people send to family and pay for goods.

So the mandate compresses the commercial case for competing on person-to-person transfers just as it forces everyone onto the same shared infrastructure. If you can't charge for most of what moves, where does the business model go? Merchant payments, lending, savings — the layers the 24 API-certified providers are already positioned to build on, and everyone else isn't.