MTN wallet users drop 29% to 1.8m
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
MTN Momo wallet active users declined 29.4 per cent to 1.8 million in the third quarter (Q3 2022), MTN Nigeria disclosed in its financial report for the first nine months of the year to September (9M 2022).
However, registered MoMo wallets more than doubled to 9.9 million in Q3 2022, underlying momentum in the fintech ecosystem.
“Since the commercial launch of our MoMo Payment Service Bank (PSB) operations in May 2022, we have focused on building our fintech ecosystem and executing its growth strategy.
“Our active fintech users at the end of September 2022 were 11.2 million, of which 1.8 million are active MoMo wallets, down 29.4% in Q3,” MTN explained.
“Fintech revenue increased by 21.9%, and growth was broad-based across Xtratime (our airtime lending product, up 20.6%) and core fintech services (wallet and agency business, up 232.0%).
“In addition, we expanded our mobile money (MoMo) agent network by adding over 21k active agents in Q3, bringing the total number to approximately 188k.
“The agent network continued to play a pivotal role in our MoMo ecosystem and helped to drive growth in the total volume of transactions by 112.2% YoY.”
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Overall Momo progress
“Overall, MoMo PSB continues to make steady progress in its operations. Our current focus is to grow the user base and scale basic services, targeting the sizable unbanked segment in the country,” MTN said, per reporting by Nairametrics.
“Over time, we will leverage our market-leading distribution to evolve the mix towards more advanced services across our fintech verticals, in line with our Ambition 2025 strategy.
“Digital revenue grew by 68.4% as penetration of our digital products continues to deepen, driven by user journey optimisation and increased usage from our active base. Rich Media, Mobile Advertising and Content VAS drove revenue growth.”
MTN said it is expanding mobile money business as it deploys more agents as well as coverage to reach more unbanked and underbanked Nigerians.
It added more than 21,000 active agents in Q3 2022, bringing the total number to about 188,000 in the quarter.