People's access to financial services has been growing at an exponential rate in Benin since 2017. As proof, at the end of December 2018, financial services via mobile telephony recorded a volume of 202.104 million transactions against 105.355 million transactions. in 2017, an increase of 91.8% according to the 2018 activity report of the Electronic Communications and Post Authority (Arcep-Benin).

The value of transactions reached the sum of 2,081.796 billion FCFA in 2018 against 1,974.914 billion FCFA in 2017, which corresponds to an increase of 5.4%. The increase in the volume of activities is supported by the growing number of subscribers to financial services via mobile telephony.

Indeed, the operators have developed service offerings and organized promotional campaigns that have encouraged the use of mobile financial services for credit reloading operations and other electronic transactions. Mobile financial service has grown significantly and mobile network operators have played a key role in this growth.

With these services, mobile money is dramatically transforming consumer habits in terms of accessing financial services, while providing new business opportunities for operators. The mobile financial service sector in Benin is led by Mobile Money and Moov Money. It is therefore a strategy to boost financial inclusion in Benin.

The increase in access to financial services continued at the beginning of 2019. According to the report of the Central Bank of West African States (Bceao), in the first quarter the outstanding loans in Decentralized Financial Systems (SFD) recorded an increase of (+6.1%).

As a reminder, financial inclusion is the set of measures put in place to fight against banking and financial exclusion. It encompasses a whole range of financial and non-financial products and services made accessible to poor populations. It allows poor populations to finance their activities, to save, to meet the needs of their families and to protect themselves against the risks of everyday life.

The distribution of the range of financial and non-financial products and services on the market is ensured by various financial organizations: microfinance institutions (MFIs), cooperatives, micro-insurance providers, banks, etc. It is essential that these distributors register their activities in a responsible and social approach to fulfill the primary objective of financial inclusion: to fight against poverty.

However, many challenges remain for these distributors: the challenge is to serve the interests of poor populations while ensuring their own economic viability.

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