Background
Mali introduced a 1% infrastructure levy on mobile money transactions some years ago. Most operators (Orange Money, Moov Money) integrated the deduction into their tariffs from day one. Wave Mali, which markets itself on a flat-fee model, had taken a different operational stance.
Wave's business model and why it conflicted
Wave is a Senegal-headquartered mobile money operator that has aggressively undercut incumbents across WAEMU since 2020 with a flat 1% send-fee model. Wave's positioning is built on price transparency and on what it argues is unnecessary complexity in the traditional MoMo tariff grid. The 1% Mali infrastructure levy created a tension: Wave's own 1% send fee already collected revenue from users, and stacking the government 1% on top would push the all-in cost above the flat 1% headline Wave advertises. Wave responded by absorbing or netting the levy in various creative ways through 2024-2025, a position the DGCC ultimately ruled was not compliant.
The February 2026 ruling
In a notice issued on 18 February 2026, the Direction Générale du Commerce et de la Concurrence (DGCC) of Mali confirmed that the 1% levy applies to all licensed mobile money operators, including Wave. The ruling clarifies a legal grey area that had persisted through 2025 and removes the operator-level pricing asymmetry.
Political backdrop
Mali's tax-and-spend politics has been turbulent since the 2021 coup, and successive military-led transitional governments have prioritised broadening domestic revenue collection to reduce dependence on multilateral financing. The infrastructure levy is one of the main domestic revenue tools applied to digital transactions, and explicit DGCC enforcement against the largest operators is consistent with that revenue-broadening priority. The ruling is unlikely to be reversed in the short term.
BCEAO regulator silence
The BCEAO, the regional central bank, has been notably quiet on the Mali-Wave dispute. BCEAO's remit covers prudential supervision and the WAEMU PI-SPI rail, not direct tax enforcement, which sits with national tax authorities. The Bank has signalled in public communications that it considers tax-and-levy design a national prerogative within the WAEMU framework, even when the result is uneven competitive terms across operators in the region.
What it means for users
For a XOF 10,000 transfer, the 1% levy is XOF 100. Wave Mali's flat-fee model means the user previously saw a small visible fee plus a possible operator-level netting; from this ruling forward, the 1% is explicitly itemised. The end-to-end landed cost on a typical Mali wallet-to-wallet transfer is essentially unchanged in absolute terms but is now broken out clearly.
Cross-border
The Mali ruling does not affect PI-SPI free transfers across the WAEMU zone — PI-SPI sits above operator tariffs and uses the BCEAO regional rail. The 1% levy applies to in-country Mali transfers and to non-PI-SPI use cases (merchant, large B2B).