Orange Cameroon has been granted permission by the country’s Ministry of Finance to launch Orange Money Cameroon SA, a subsidiary dedicated to financial transactions via mobile phones.
Hardly surprisingly, this is seen as a new milestone in the development of Orange Money in Cameroon, where the existing service already claims 10 million accounts, more than 100,000 business partners and about 200,000 direct and indirect jobs created.
However, this appears to be a new stage for the service. Quoting the company, news outlets say that “Orange Money Cameroon SA is now authorized to provide, autonomously, payment services such as deposits, transfers and withdrawals of money, purchases of credit and telephone packages, payments of bills, salaries, taxes and fees, collection and remittance of funds and receipt of international money transfers”.
Orange Cameroon has appointed Anne Catherine Tchakonte Tholagheu, who was already managing the Orange Money service when it was part of the mobile phone company, as the new subsidiary’s managing director.
As a standalone company Orange Money Cameroon SA puts the Orange Group in a better position to make the most of new opportunities such as tax payments via mobile. Apparently the government approval of this service has meant taxpayers paying approximately CFAF10 billion (about $15.4 million) in taxes via mobile phones for the year 2021 alone.
Orange Money says that, since its launch in 2008 in Côte d'Ivoire, 60 million customers in 17 countries rely on it to access simple and secure financial services and that Orange Money is now a major growth driver for Orange.
This isn’t the first time this year that Orange Cameroon has made headlines in the mobile money market. In January we reported that it had rolled out a new remittance corridor from Europe to mobile money account holders in Cameroon.
