MTN Nigeria Reports 39.4% Decline in Fintech Customers for H1 2023

In its recently released H1 2023 financial results, MTN Nigeria revealed a significant 39.4% decrease in its fintech customer base, bringing the total number of users down to 7 million by the end of June.

Out of these 7 million fintech customers, 3.1 million are MoMo wallet users, constituting 44% of MTN’s overall fintech customers. Despite the decline in customers, the company managed to achieve a 7.8% growth in fintech revenue, reaching N43.6 billion for the first six months of the year compared to N40.4 billion during the same period in the previous year.

MTN’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Karl Toriola, attributed the poor performance of the fintech business to the effects of cash shortages on over-the-counter (OTC) transactions during Q1. As a result, the active user base experienced a YoY decline of 39.3%, reaching 7.0 million, with around 3.1 million representing active MoMo PSB wallets.

Nevertheless, Toriola emphasized that MTN remains committed to its fintech business, viewing it as a critical priority for the company’s growth strategy and aligned with their Ambition 2025 strategy. MTN plans to enhance its fintech campaigns to increase awareness among users.

During H1, MTN took several measures to bolster its fintech ecosystem, including reopening the NIBSS interface for inbound and outbound transfers, strengthening control systems, and introducing the basic version of their MoMo app. These efforts yielded momentum in the ecosystem, with fintech transaction volume showing an impressive YoY increase of 67.1%.

Toriola disclosed that MTN now boasts 227,000 MoMo agents, extending their services closer to customers across Nigeria, and has onboarded 36,000 merchants into their ecosystem.

Additionally, MTN experienced significant growth in its digital revenue during the same period, registering a remarkable 49.9% increase. This growth was fueled by revenue from rich media services and content VAS. The company attributed this progress to the adoption of digital products and the expansion of the active user base, which surged by 56.6% to 14 million.

MTN’s instant messaging platform, Ayoba, also witnessed positive traction, attracting over 2 million new users and reaching 7.2 million monthly active users in H1. Moreover, the company achieved a 48.5% rise in service revenue from the enterprise business, driven by mobile and fixed connectivity services and the successful onboarding of new customers across all segments.