Abstract

The rapid expansion of digital payment platforms has transformed financial services into platform-based systems where a multitude of users, firms, agents, banks, and regulators interact. Globally, these platforms now shape how people send money, save, borrow, and engage in economic activities. However, the advantages of mobile payment systems are contingent upon their adoption and governance frameworks. Dominant firms may leverage network effects to safeguard their market positions, restrict interoperability, diminish competition, and consequently undermine broader welfare benefits (Bianchi et al., 2023). In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), mobile money has emerged as the dominant financial access channel for unbanked populations, yet the region exhibits wide institutional variation in regulatory quality, fintech market structure, and governance capacity. These disparities are crucial determinants in the extent to which mobile money facilitates financial inclusion. Despite this growing body of work, the joint roles of governance structures and platform competition in driving value creation remain empirically underexplored. Chinoda and Kapingura (2024) showed that institutional quality significantly shapes the relationship between digital financial inclusion and economic growth in SSA. However, their study, like much of the existing work in this context, does not account for the competitive structure of platform markets. This limits our understanding of how regulatory governance and competition jointly affect value creation and leaves policymakers with limited guidance on designing inclusive, competitive digital finance policies. This study explores how governance and competition interact to shape value in digital payment ecosystems across SSA. We constructed a panel dataset for all SSA countries using data from the World Bank Global Findex, the IMF Financial Access Survey, the GSMA Mobile Money Database, and the World Governance Indicators. Panel models including country and year fixed effects and dynamic Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimations are employed to address heterogeneity and endogeneity concerns. Preliminary findings suggest that stronger regulatory governance increases value creation, while a highly competitive platform may limit inclusive adoption. The study contributes to IS platform governance research by linking platform theory with institutional economics in the context of SSA, while offering practical guidance for regulators, fintech firms, and policymakers seeking to build digital payment systems that support innovation, efficiency, and financial inclusion across the Global South.

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