MTN Group’s mobile money platform processed $500.3 billion in transaction value in 2025, marking one of the most significant milestones in Africa’s fintech evolution. The scale alone demands perspective.
On a constant currency basis, transaction value rose 37.6% year-on-year, but on a reported basis the growth looks even more dramatic. Compared with the $321.3 billion recorded in 2024, the increase stands at 55.7%, partly amplified by currency movements but still extraordinary by any measure.Transaction volumes climbed to 23.3 billion, up 14.9% from the previous year. The divergence between volume and value growth tells the deeper story. Africans are not simply making more transactions on MTN’s platform; they are making larger ones. Mobile money is moving beyond airtime top-ups and small peer-to-peer transfers toward higher-value commercial payments and financial services.
The shift is most visible in markets such as Ghana, Uganda and increasingly Rwanda, where mobile money is becoming embedded in everyday economic activity. Nigeria, however, remains the outlier.
A particularly striking figure in MTN’s 2025 fintech performance is the rapid expansion of its lending services. The company facilitated $3.5 billion in loan value through its platform, representing an 80.4% increase in constant currency. In practical terms, the lending business nearly doubled in a single year.MTN attributes this acceleration to growing utilisation of its marketplace lending offering and the MoMo Advance programme, particularly in Uganda and Ghana. New lending products introduced in Rwanda, Zambia, Cameroon and Congo-Brazzaville have added momentum to the expansion.
Yet key details remain undisclosed. MTN has not revealed the default rate, loan tenors or interest rate structures attached to these products. In a fintech landscape increasingly scrutinized for aggressive digital lending practices, those metrics will become central to understanding the long-term sustainability of this growth.
The lending surge also reflects a broader structural shift within MTN’s fintech business. Advanced services including lending, insurance, investment products and digital payments now account for 34.1% of MoMo revenue, up from approximately 29.9% in 2024. The increase signals a strategic repositioning. MTN is no longer merely a payments platform with adjacent financial services; it is evolving into a financial services ecosystem built on a telecom infrastructure.
Ghana provides the clearest illustration of how policy and product can accelerate fintech adoption. MTN’s fintech revenue in the country rose 33.3% in constant currency to roughly GH₵5.85 billion, while active users increased 12.3% to 19.3 million.
The catalyst was not a new technology feature but a regulatory decision. Ghana abolished its electronic transaction levy (e-levy) in 2025, a tax that had weighed on mobile money usage since its introduction in 2022. Once removed, withdrawal and transfer volumes rebounded sharply, growing 26.2% in constant currency.
The policy shift coincided with improving macroeconomic conditions. A strengthening cedi and moderating inflation restored consumer purchasing power, encouraging higher-value transactions and broader adoption of advanced services such as lending, insurance and investment products.
In the fourth quarter of the year, MTN introduced a mutual fund investment product through MoMo in Ghana, allowing customers to invest directly in domestic stocks and bonds via their mobile wallets. The move places the telecom giant squarely in competition with traditional brokerage firms and asset managers, underscoring how rapidly the mobile money ecosystem is expanding into mainstream financial services.
For Nigeria, the contrast is instructive.MTN Group CEO Ralph Mupita acknowledged that Nigeria remains the company’s most challenging fintech market, even as he pointed to early signs of progress. Structural constraints largely explain the gap.
Nigeria’s central bank has historically taken a cautious approach to telecom-led financial services, preferring the payment service bank (PSB) model, which restricts the range of financial products telecom operators can provide. Meanwhile, fintech companies such as OPay and PalmPay built specifically for digital financial services without telecom infrastructure cost have aggressively captured the country’s fast-growing agent banking market.MTN’s own network metrics reflect this tension. In 2024, an agent rationalisation exercise reduced the company’s active agent count by 9% to 1.2 million. By 2025 the network had rebounded to 1.4 million agents, a 19.4% increase, suggesting renewed expansion. But the competitive and regulatory pressures remain unresolved.
A key element of MTN’s strategy is the structural separation of its fintech operations in major markets. Once completed, this restructuring would allow the fintech subsidiary to attract external investment independent of the telecom parent company. It would also provide clearer financial visibility into the standalone performance of MTN’s fintech business in markets like Nigeria.
Distribution remains central to the MoMo model. The company expanded its merchant acceptance network to 2.1 million locations, up 15.7% year-on-year. In markets where smartphone penetration and internet access remain uneven, physical agents continue to function as the backbone of financial inclusion, acting as the bridge between cash economies and digital financial services.Cross-border remittances through MTN’s platform reached $6.2 billion in 2025, growing 10.9% as the company deepened integrations with formal remittance partners. However, the slower growth rate compared with other fintech segments suggests that informal transfer corridors remain resilient, driven by cost sensitivity, convenience and longstanding trust networks.Financially, the fintech business is becoming one of MTN’s most important engines of profitability. The company reported R28.8 billion (about $1.71 billion) in fintech revenue on a pro forma basis in 2025, representing 23.2% growth in constant currency.
Margins are equally notable. MTN’s fintech division maintains EBITDA margins in the mid-to-high 30% range, outperforming many standalone African fintech startups and exceeding the margins of the group’s traditional connectivity business.These numbers reinforce the central premise of MTN’s Ambition 2030 strategy, which positions fintech alongside connectivity and digital infrastructure as one of the company’s three long-term growth pillars.
The strategic question now is what the business looks like once fintech operations are fully separated and operating with greater financial transparency across markets. Ghana and Uganda represent the most mature mobile money ecosystems in MTN’s portfolio, while Nigeria remains the largest potential prize.
The gap between those realities will shape the next chapter of MTN’s fintech story and potentially the future structure of Africa’s digital financial services industry.
