UTL's M-Sente presents itself as a general payment method with "simply pay with M-Sente," while Warid Telecom's Pesa markets itself as the "true mobile money service," as users can send money across all rival networks.

In addition to money transfer, other types of transactions are beginning to emerge. In March the MTN Group and Western Union took mobile money transfer global to allow the more than 2 million customers of MTN's mobile money transfer service in Uganda to add funds to their accounts, which they can send through Western Union's system. They can receive money via the same system from anywhere in the world.

Western Union has similar agreements with Safaricom's M-Pesa in Kenya, Vodacom in Tanzania, Telmar Madagascar and Inova in Burkina Faso, and other such agreements are in the works.

Locally, the National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC), the water utility in Uganda, has closed hundreds of its agency offices around the country and is encouraging customers to pay their bills via mobile money services. Payments via mobile phones are also catching up in other sectors as companies realize they can cut collection costs.

World Bank Group President Robert Zoellick said that providing financial services to the 2.5 billion people who are "unbanked" could boost economic growth and opportunity for the world's poor. Data in the bank's survey was collected by Gallup using the Gallup World Poll Survey.