We approach Telemedia Barcelona on 1 and 2 March, with the sector seeing explosive growth. The mobile money boom being seen across Africa heralds a new, golden era for telemedia worldwide. While the telemedia industry largely still centres around DCB, the growing uptake of mobile money services – not to mention wallets and other alt.pay offerings around the world – is still good news for the sector.
The burgeoning use of mobile money encourages people to spend on their phones. It is as simple as that. Airtel Africa’s booming mobile money customer base exemplifies this clearly. It now services 52mn customers – up 17.3% year on year – while annualised total processed value (TPV) for Q3’26 surpassed the $200bn threshold, with an increase of 36% to more than $210bn. This is a lot of people spending a lot of money.
Of course, it isn’t all on entertainment – In Egypt for example, the Government has licenced DCB via tpay as a means of paying by phone for state services – but it does market a move towards almost ubiquitous use of the phone, one way or another, as a payment tool.
Loving the low-friction
While usually viewed through the lens of financial inclusion for the unbanked, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the convenience factor of both DCB and mobile money are becoming key to their uptake. In the Egyptian example above, some 76% of the population has a bank account; the addition of DCB as a way to pay for government services is that it is low-friction, safe and secure – a security underpinned by the companies such as Evina, recently announced as a platinum sponsor of Telemedia Johannesburg in June, alongside CFM (Content for Mobile).
The kinds of content that are growing in popularity are also aiding the uptake of DCB, mobile money and alt.pay. As we reported at the end of January, research from Adobe into UK content habits was unequivocal about short-form video now being the major content format. Of course people will pay to stream this sort of thing, but the real revenue opportunity lies in monetising within that content or service.
Take for example the growing interest in IRL (‘in real life’) video content. This is short form video (though it can also be long, or even ultra-long: some last 24 hours) that depicts ‘real life’ – city walks, meet and greets and so on – and is monetised by advertising and by tipping. It is this tipping that is most interesting to telemedia. Viewers are encouraged to send gifts and tips to the content creators in the live stream and, since these are often low value micro-payments, are very well suited to DCB or mobile money. They also need to be low friction as they are impulsive, again playing into the DCB mindset.
What sets IRL apart from other content types – and why it currently is a big potential earner – is that it taps into the current hunger for authenticity. People want real people doing normal stuff, perhaps as an antidote to increasing AI content and slop, and this drives use. The more authentic and the more engaging the more tipping and so the more DCB and mobile money use. This is likely to see IRL grow in 2026 and take mobile payments with it.
A plethora of DCB billed services
But entertainment is not the only game in town. Embedded financial services, education and edutainment content, kids learning, gaming, cloud software and use of AI services; all are growing in popularity around the world and all contributing to the growth in micropayments.
This can be seen clearly in the latest numbers around DCB, with Mordor Research predicting that DCB alone is set to hit $53.38bn in 2026, growing from an already impressive $47.3bn in 2025 – and could hit $97.77bn by 2031.
In fact, reading Mordor’s report suggests that DCB is increasingly seeing application in paying for such a wide variety of things that it could well be seen as a fairly standard payment offering amongst things like cards, wallets and bank transfer. Gaming dominates, but Mordor identifies a long list of other areas where DCB is set to generate excellent revenues in the coming three years. Cloud and utility software, workplace and domestic SaaS, ticketing and transport, mobility, music, video and audio streaming, not to mention IRL, gaming, in-game purchases, government services, elearning and so on.
For telcos and telemedia players, there has never been a better time to be in business. Sure, its competitive, but the consumer base is there and ripe for the taking.
