No other African country has yet managed to replicate the success of Safaricom's M-PESA system in Kenya, soon to hit 15 million users.

With money only transferable between customers on the same network, the challenge elsewhere has been in building a user base so big that it is impossible to function without signing up.

Rwanda plans to leapfrog the problem by launching a cross-network money transfer system in 2012, which will make it faster to transfer money in Rwanda than in the Netherlands, central bank governor Claver Gatete told The Africa Report.

In Nigeria, regulators have licensed banks to lead the mobile money roll-out by pairing up with a telecom operator.

The test will be whether the operators believe they are getting a good share of the profits.