MTN’s digital business gains traction as MoMo active wallet users hit 5.3m

MTN Nigeria has reported that its MoMo Payment Service Bank (PSB) reached 5.3 million active wallet users on its platform as of December 2023.

According to MTN, MoMo PSB was able to grow its wallet users by 3.3 million to achieve the feat. This company disclosed this in its full-year 2023 financial results, which shows how its fintech business has been impacting the company’s overall performance.

MTN stated that the PSB gained more traction by expanding its agent network in the year by 103,000 to 327,000. The company’s active merchant ecosystem, which started in March 2023, also reached over 324,000 by December 2023, according to the company’s records.

Commenting on the company’s fintech business performance for the year, MTN’s CEO, Karl Toriola, said: “Our fintech revenue increased by 2.4 per cent, led by Xtratime (our airtime lending product), which rose by 2 per cent.

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However, despite the challenges from the NIN requirement for KYC introduced in the fourth quarter of 2023 by the CBN, we added 3.3 million active wallets in the year to 5.3 million. This helped to drive MoMo PSB revenue, which rose by 8.1 per cent.

“The growing adoption and increased activity within our fintech ecosystem spurred transaction volume growth of 49.2 per cent Year-on-Year. We also now have over 326,000 MoMo agents, up 46.0 per cent YoY, and over 324,000 merchants since we started to build out our merchant ecosystem in March 2023.

“While the overall development of fintech has been slower than anticipated, these milestones mark solid and important progress in scaling our business, particularly the advanced services within our MoMo ecosystem.”

Toriola added that MTN’s digital business has continued to gain traction on the optimisation of its digital service offers and improved customer journey and partnerships.

These underpinned the growth in the active user base of the company’s digital services, with rich media subscriptions excluding Ayoba up by 57.2 per cent to approximately 8 million.

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MTN’s instant messaging platform, Ayoba, recorded a 65.6 per cent growth to 8.6 million active monthly users.

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“We continue to drive the onboarding of new partners within our digital ecosystem and expand the bouquet of service offerings to sustain the growth of the business. Overall, service revenue from digital services was up by 69.9 per cent,” Toriola stated.

MTN was issued a Payment Service Bank (PSB) licence by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in 2022 alongside the three other mobile network operators, Airtel (Smart Cash PSB), Glo (Moneymaster PSB), and 9mobile (9PSB) to deepen financial inclusion in the country.

As a PSB, MoMo can collect deposits and offer savings accounts to its consumers. Individuals and small enterprises are among their clients. It can also facilitate cross-border transfers through all of Nigeria’s available methods.