MTN Nigeria is recalibrating its fintech strategy with a focus on deepening penetration in rural areas as its MoMo PSB active wallets declined to 2.1 million in Q1 2025.
This represents a 55.6% decline year-on-year compared with the 4.8 million recorded in Q1 2024, and a 25% decline quarter-on-quarter as the fintech’s active wallets stood at 2.8 million in Q4 2024.
For the first quarter of 2025, MTN, in its unaudited financial results, said it strategically focused on enhancing the quality of its ecosystem, which led to a decline in active wallets.
“This enabled us to onboard more high-value customers and improve float levels, thereby enhancing the overall health and sustainability of the ecosystem,” the company stated.
Rural penetration strategy
Commenting on the company’s result, MTN Nigeria CEO, Karl Toriola, said the company, as part of its long-term ambition to drive financial inclusion, will be launching a rural penetration strategy aimed at expanding access to financial services for underserved and financially excluded communities.
“We are now prepared to invest and intensify qualitative field acquisition efforts, particularly in rural and underserved areas, in line with our financial inclusion objectives.
“These efforts are aligned with our strategic objective to build a more robust, inclusive, and scalable digital financial ecosystem,” Toriola stated.
Meanwhile, MTN reported that the number of agents and merchants on the MoMo network increased by 47.7% and 23.6%, respectively, compared to December 2024.
Fintech revenue growth
Despite the decline in MoMo wallets, MTN recorded a 57.9% increase in its fintech revenue, driven largely by its airtime lending product (Xtratime).
- The company’s fintech revenue jumped from N22.8 billion in Q1 2024 to N36 billion in Q1 2025.
- The company said this growth was also boosted by higher float income, supported by the onboarding of high-value customers.
- It added that the revamp of its customer acquisition strategy, which commenced in Q3 2024, allowed the company to further optimise its incentives and customer engagement framework to strengthen qualitative performance, deepen service penetration, and enhance performance monitoring across sales and distribution channels.
MTN’s digital services business also delivered robust growth of 92.1%, underpinned by increased demand for rich media content and enhancements to the user journey.
While monthly active users of rich media services (excluding ayoba) declined by 19.4% to 7.9 million compared to December 2024, due to platform optimisation initiatives, overall engagement levels improved.
This led to strong revenue growth across both rich media and value-added services (VAS).
What you should know
Nairametrics earlier reported that MTN Nigeria recorded a N1 trillion revenue in the first quarter of this year, buoyed by the recent tariff increment implemented in the middle of February 2025.
Compared with the N752.9 billion recorded in Q1 2024, this represents a 40.5% increase in revenue year-on-year, even as the impact of the tariff adjustment has yet to be fully realized.
The company bounced back to profitability in the quarter, posting N133.7 billion profit after tax compared with the N392.7 billion loss it recorded in Q1 2024.
