Telecommunications group, MTN, has announced plans to invest an additional R35 to R39 billion (approximately $1.8 billion) to boost its data and fintech services offerings across Africa this year.
This follows as the group’s active fintech users rose to 72.5 million at the end of 2023.
The volume of fintech transactions increased by around 30% to 17.6 billion, with the value of transactions across the fintech platform increasing by $272 billion, according to the company’s audited financial results for 2023, which were published on Monday.
According to the company, this growth was attributed to advanced payment services, banking technology, and remittance solutions.
Recall that MTN group recently closed a deal with Mastercard Inc. that values its fintech business at $5.2 billion.
The MTN Group President and Chief Executive Officer Ralph Mupita acknowledged that this year’s macroeconomic conditions in some of its operational environments, particularly the volatility caused by foreign exchange movements in Nigeria, will remain a challenge.
He said, “We are anticipating that the macro conditions in our trading environment will persist in 2024, with naira volatility and elevated inflation the key challenges we will need to navigate.
“MTN plans to invest R35-39 billion in 2024 to position the company to capture the structural demand for data and fintech services across Africa.”
“We maintain our overall medium-term guidance framework, however simplifying our objective for fintech,” Mupita said, adding that MTN was encouraged by the outlook for the fintech business, given the solid growth in advanced services.
The partnership with Mastercard positions the business well to scale faster and we are excited about the commercial launches of card issuance, acceptance, and remittances across the footprint.”
The MTN Group stated that, in 2023, the continued high demand for data and financial technology services was evidence of the need to make further investments in data. The Group’s active data subscribers increased by more than 9% to 150 million – half the total subscriber base.
The Group’s active Mobile Money (MoMo) users also increased by 5% to 72.5 million, impacted by a strategic shift in focus to wallet customers in Nigeria and base clean-ups in Côte d’Ivoire and South Africa.
