WATCH: MTN bullish about its Africa fintech business

Africa’s largest mobile services provider, MTN , now also operates one of the continent’s largest mobile payment platforms, MoMo, says group president and CEO Ralph Mupita.

Mupita outlined the ongoing evolution of the company’s financial services business in a recent episode of MTN’s thought-leadership vodcast series, The Yello Chair — watch it above.

He detailed how the group is transitioning from an initial focus on rapidly building scale towards the monetisation of advanced services, such as lending.

Mupita says the MoMo platform is operating at immense transaction scale across MTN’s footprint, supported by its extensive user and merchant network.

This is reflected in the group’s interim results for the six months to June 2026 , which show MoMo now has 70.8-million monthly active users and 2.3-million merchants accepting mobile money daily.

The group processed over $330bn in transaction value during the first half of 2026, more than a third higher than the prior comparable period. This was spread across 13-billion individual transactions, translating to about 50,000 transactions per minute.

Advanced services, including payments and lending, led overall fintech revenue growth in the period.

Mupita also highlighted the value of strategic partnerships in supporting growth.

Through its partnership with Mastercard, MTN’s fintech operation has been able to scale card issuance, with close to a million virtual and physical companion cards issued.

Mastercard has been a major partner since early 2024, when it made a R3.8bn investment in MTN’s fintech business, which was valued at $5.2bn at the time.

While transaction volumes are very high, revenue from the business came in at about R14.9bn for the period.

Addressing the relationship between transaction value and revenue, Mupita highlighted the dynamics of the “take rate”, which broadly measures the revenue generated relative to the value moving through the ecosystem.

“The goal is to build a massive ecosystem and determine how effectively we can monetise it and generate a return on our investment.”

He contrasted the strategies pursued by start-ups with the realities facing an established enterprise, saying “different models apply”.