The fintech business of MTN Nigeria recorded a marginal increase to N22.8 billion in the first quarter(Q1) of this year.
According to the company’s Q1 2024 financial results just released, this represents a 0.7% growth compared with N22.7 billion recorded in the same period last year. MTN noted that its fintech revenue was impacted by industry-wide exercises of linking National Identification Numbers (NIN) with mobile numbers and KYC validation.
Specifically, a major part of the fintech business, MoMo PSB, recorded 50.5% in revenue. However, MTN said this was offset by the 5.5% increase in revenue from Xtratime, its airtime lending product.
Recommended reading: MTN Group to invest $1.8 billion in data, fintech services in 2024
Wallets decline
Highlighting the factors that affected the company’s fintech business in the period under review, MTN Nigeria’s CEO, Mr. Karl Toriola, said:
- “The KYC requirement and the delays in CBN approvals for some of our commercial initiatives impacted the growth of active wallets.
- “We ended the quarter with 4.8 million active wallet users, representing a 566k decline in Q1. The growing adoption and increased activity within our fintech ecosystem spurred transaction volume growth of 25.6% YoY.
- “We ended the quarter with 232.3k MoMo agents, which includes OTC agents, reflecting a decline of 94.4k in the period. Excluding OTC transactions, MoMo agents were 189.6k. We added more than 75k merchants in Q1, bringing the total number of merchants within our ecosystem to over 400k.”
Toriola further disclosed that the KYC validation exercise impacted approximately a million active wallets.
Fintech priority
Despite the setbacks, Toriola said the fintech business remains a priority for the company and will continue to push for wallet adoption.
- “We remain focused on our fintech priority to build robust structures that support the acceleration of wallet adoption and the growth of our merchant ecosystem.
- “We continue to drive consumer education and awareness, leveraging our distribution network. Additionally, we are expanding the bouquet of services from basic to advanced services to boost adoption and monetization.
- “These are important steps towards scaling our fintech business and driving financial inclusion,” he said.
Meanwhile, MTN’s digital services revenue was up by 88.6% in the first quarter as the adoption of its digital products continues to grow with user journey optimization, revamped digital offers, and the growth of the active base, up 43.0% to 16.7 million YoY.
According to the company, its instant messaging platform, Ayoba, recorded a 27.3% YoY growth to 8.5 million active monthly users but remained relatively flat in the quarter.
