Telecommunications giant MTN Group is making progress in its plans to relaunch Mobile Money (MoMo) in South Africa, while MTN Nigeria has been cleared to launch the first phase of its financial technology (fintech) business after securing a super-agent licence.

A comprehensive fintech ecosystem has become a key focus and a major driver of new value creation for the JSE-listed company, with fintech revenue increasing by 30.7% to R4.7-billion during the six months to June.

This was supported by customer growth of 8.9% to 30-million active MoMo users, with monthly average revenue per user at $1.30.

The total value of transactions in the six months to June was $44.1-billion, with 9 193 transactions processed each minute.

During the six months under review, South Africa’s fintech revenue increased by 21.6%, and the company plans on relaunching its MoMo platform during the second half of the year.

MTN Nigeria posted a 21.2% increase in fintech revenue during the first half of the year.

MTN Nigeria, through its subsidiary, Yello Digital Financial Services, has now obtained the super-agent licence, which enables MTN to expand its fintech business while it awaits a banking licence, says Group president and CEO Rob Shuter.

The super-agent licence will enable MTN to ‘convert’ its existing airtime agents and recruit other small businesses to distribute financial services.

“We will continue to work towards obtaining a payment service banking licence that we applied for in late 2018,” says Shuter of the licence that will enable MTN to offer a broader and deeper range of financial services.

The group also plans to roll out advanced instant messaging platform Ayoba in Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda and Liberia in the second half of the year, with the intention of integrating payments into the service as part of its broadening of the fintech business.

Ayoba is already live in three West African markets and has more than 300 000 active monthly users.

Ayoba will also incorporate MTN’s new artificial intelligence- (AI-) based service.

In May, MTN launched the first MoMo AI service, or chatbot, in Côte d’Ivoire, with plans to deploy this across MTN’s MoMo footprint in the next few months.

The AI ‘assistant’ enables customers to engage with MTN’s MoMo services, including payments, on various social media platforms, such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, as well as through SMS.

In addition, MTN plans to deploy its ‘MTN Homeland’ offering, which will allow money to be sent quickly and affordably from Europe to MoMo recipients in Africa.

“We remain focused on building our digital operator strategy,” Shuter says, highlighting its focus on becoming a scale player in evolving telco, fintech and digital services spaces.

“Our markets are characterised by significant population growth, youthful demographics, low levels of smartphone penetration and data and digital adoption, as well as large unbanked populations.”

In line with raising its fintech profile, MTN announced the appointment of Yolanda Cuba as group chief digital and fintech officer in July to drive the group’s strategic expansion of its financial services and digital solutions efforts and transformation into a digital operator.

“We are committed to improving financial inclusion, with a range of solutions aimed at addressing the needs of various market segments. While MTN has made great strides in these areas, we will continue working to deliver our vision for MTN to become one of the largest fintech players across our footprint,” Shuter concludes.