MTN to Leverage 166,000 MoMo Agents for Payments Bank Launch in Q2

MTN Nigeria which has just reported another sterling quarterly results for (Q1), 2022, says it is set to leverage its existing network of thousands of Mobile Money (MoMo) agents to launch its Payments Service Bank (PSB) operations.

“Our existing MoMo business provides a solid foundation for launching MoMo PSB and driving digital and financial inclusion in Nigeria. As at the end of March 2022, we had approximately 10.7 million active users and 166k active MoMo agents,” MTN Nigeria CEO, Karl Toriola, said.

MTN Nigeria was recently granted final approval for a Payment Service Bank (PSB) by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). This will enable the Telco to offer financial services in line with the CBN’s guidelines and support the government in fulfilling its agenda of driving financial inclusion in Nigeria.

It expects to launch the business in the second quarter (Q2) of 2022. Fintech revenue for MTN rose by 46.5% in Q1, 2022 on the back of the growing adoption of its fintech services and expanded user base.

For the period it continued to expand its MoMo agent network with more than 800k registered agents and over 166k active agents (agents who perform a minimum of ten revenue-generating transactions within 30 days).

“Having established a significant foundation of registered agent network, we are now focusing on scaling the active base. We have expanded our agent services to include card withdrawal services by deploying point of sales (POS) terminals to the agent network. This has contributed to growing our total volume of transactions to over 56.1 million, up 132.7% YoY, by more than 10.7 million active users (up 135.2%),” Toriola said.

Key metrics for MTN in Q1, 2022:

• Mobile subscribers declined by 1.3 million to 70.2 million YoY, impacted by the regulatory restrictions on new SIM sales and activations

• Added 1.7 million subscribers in Q1 2022 vs Q4 2021
• Active data users increased by 3.4 million to 35.9 million YoY
• Added 1.6 million active users in Q1 2022 vs Q4 2021
• Active fintech subscribers rose by 6.2 million to 10.7 million YoY
• Added 1.3 million subscribers in Q1 2022 vs Q4 2021
• Service revenue increased by 22.0% to N469.8 billion
• Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA)
• grew by 25.7% to N257.1 billion
• EBITDA margin increased by 1.5 percentage points (pp) to 54.6%
• Profit after tax (PAT) grew by 31.3% to N96.8 billion
• Earnings per share (EPS) rose by 31.3% to N4.76 kobo
• Capital expenditure (Capex) rose by 80.8% to N162.5 billion (up 156.8%
• to N81.2 billion, excluding right of use assets)
• Final dividend of N8.57 kobo per share for FY 2021