MTN Is Speeding Up Mobile Money In Nigeria.
TECHDIGEST – MTN, Africa’s largest telecommunications company, has been making headlines this year for all the right reasons.
Firstly, a rebranding as a tech firm, followed by the purchase of metaverse land and payment of 13.5 percent of the entire revenue collected by the Nigerian federal tax authority in 2021.
Yesterday, MTN Nigeria received final approval from the Central Bank of Nigeria to run a payment service bank.
MTN Nigeria can now provide almost all of the services that traditional commercial banks provide, with the exception of credit and foreign exchange transactions.
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For Nigerians, it means a new and less stressful method of payment that is not dependent on a data connection or a smartphone. While Nigeria already has a functional banking infrastructure that’s allows for quick interbank transfers, mobile money will go much further by eliminating walk-in services and even card transactions. Nigerians would be able to pay for everything from groceries at convenience stores to renewing DStv subscriptions using their MoMo wallets.
This statement comes after Airtel Africa Plc and MTN Nigeria Communications Plc were granted an approval in principle to establish a payment service bank in the country in November 2021. The ultimate permission was contingent on meeting certain conditional standards within six months. This suggests that, while MTN has received its own approval, Airtel Nigeria may do so soon.
Nigeria, while having Africa’s biggest unbanked population, has not had the same exponential increase in mobile money usage as its regional peers Ghana and Kenya, and falls behind them in terms of penetration. Since its inception in August 2019, MTN Nigeria’s mobile money service has garnered 9.4 million active customers, according to the company. As the number of use cases for mobile money grows, this approval is expected to boost adoption in Nigeria.
