Société Générale closes operations for its African mobile money service Yup

France-based banking group Société Générale has shut down its mobile payment solution Yup, which was operating in several African countries.

According to The Africa Report, this activity was structurally unprofitable due, in particular, to the price war waged by more agile competitors.

Société Générale has put an end to Yup at the end of March, the mobile payment solution it launched five years ago in partnership with the banking software publisher TagPay. This will mean contract termination for 100 or so employees in the seven countries (Cameroon, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Guinea and Madagascar) where the solution operated.

The banking group reportedly claimed to have over two million customers in 2020, i.e. double its initial target by that date. The solution had been particularly successful in Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon, its two main markets, explains The Africa Report. Côte d’Ivoire had more than 3,500 points of sale, two years after the launch in 2019. By the end of 2021, this figure had doubled. As for Cameroon, no less than 5,000 Yup distributors were eventually set up, while the initial target for all eight of the company’s markets was 8,000 sales outlets.

However, the active customer portfolio consisted of only one million accounts. Secondly, in terms of profitability, although Société Générale targeted a profitability threshold to justify the EUR 20 million (USD 21 million) that the French bank had invested to develop this service, it was never reached.