Orange Cameroon is stepping up efforts to expand its Orange Money mobile money service to remote areas.

At an event in Yaounde this week to mark the tenth anniversary of Orange Money, General Manager of Orange Cameroun, Frédéric Debord confirmed the company’s intention to focus on remote areas.

Debord acknowledged that challenges like recurrent breakdowns on the fibre optic network and fraud in the form of identity theft have impacted on operations.

However, the application of training and collaboration with partners has helped the company overcome these challenges.

Debord said Orange Money has evolved from a platform merely for money deposit and withdrawal to a platform through which users can purchase call airtime, SMS and data, pay utility bills such as electricity, water and TV subscription.

He also mentioned that Orange Money runs a micro insurance scheme and is now used for payment of salaries and school fees, collection of government taxes, amongst others.

In addition, Orange Money allows transactions to be carried out within the Central African sub-region thanks to a payment gateway provided by the Interbank Electronic Banking Group of Central Africa (GIMAC).

Launched in July 2011, Orange Money claims it is the leader in mobile money services in the country, with over 7 million accounts and over 60,000 wholesale and retail agents.

According to Orange, the service facilitates an average of 800 million francs CFA in transactions per month, and has 35,000 call box agents engaged in both airtime sales and mobile money transactions.

However, Cameroon’s National Institute of Statistics places its main competitor MTN MoMo ahead in terms of the provision of mobile money services in the country.