MoMo PSB, the MTN Mobile Money service in Nigeria recorded a 53.1% year-on-year increase in active wallet users to 3.6 million in Q3 2023 MTN .
Referring to a Q3 financial statement released on Monday ,quarter on quarter, the growth indicates a 16% increase compared with the 3.1 million active wallets the company recorded in the previous quarter.
MTN’s CEO, Karl Toriola, said: “Our fintech business continued to gain traction, recovering from the slowdown in H1. Fintech revenue increased by 5.6% as we increased the adoption of our core fintech services (wallet and MoMo agent business). Our fintech active user base was down by 20.4% YoY but rose by 27.2% QoQ to 8.9 million.
“The decline recorded YoY was due to a slowdown in activity level on the over-the-top (OTC) platform following the cash shortages in Q1. However, our efforts to rebuild the base continue to yield results with a 25.5% growth in OTC users versus Q1 2023.”
According to the company, MoMo users now account for 40.6% of its fintech customers. However, the number of active MoMo wallet users is quite low compared with the number of registered users. The report indicates that there were 27.9 million registered MoMo users at the end of Q3.
MoMo PSB currently has over 293,000 agents, up by 55.7% year-on-year and it has also onboarded a total of 197,000 merchants since March 2023.
MTN’s digital revenue for Q3 also grew by 55.4% on increased adoption of its digital products and the growth of the active base which rose by 67% to 16.1 million.
Regarding to Ayoba, its instant messaging platform, its growth in the monthly active users remained on track with the addition of over 2.8 million users, bringing the active users to approximately 8 million.
According to Toriola ,the company is well-positioned to drive the growth of active wallets and merchant ecosystems with consumer education and commercial activities.
The PSB would also be leveraging its agent network to take the service closer to its customers.
MTN was issued a Payment Service Bank (PSB) licence last year alongside the three other mobile network operators, intended to deepen financial inclusion in the country.
The MTN Mobile Money stores funds in a secure electronic account linked to an MTN mobile phone number.
MTN Mobile Money wallet holders can use their mobile money account in a number of ways: Receive and store money ,send money to any MTN mobile phone user – registered or not, send money to mobile phone users on other local networks, withdraw cash at any authorised MTN Mobile Money agent and top-up MTN airtime.
Uses can also pay bills, buy and pay for insurance, Pay employee salaries, airline tickets, school fees and other goods and services. MTN Mobile Money also enables users receive money from receive money from over 50 countries .
