MTN Group, the South African multinational telecommunications company, has announced the launch of its Mobile Money (MoMo) artificial intelligence service or “chatbot”.
The chatbot, the first in Africa, went live in Ivory Coast in May 2019 and will be rolled out across MTN’s MoMo footprint in the next few months.
According to the telecommunication giant, the artificial intelligence mobile money “assistant” enables customers to engage with MTN’s MoMo services, including payments, on various social media platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, and via SMS.
The service will also be included over time, in MTN’s own newly released advanced instant messaging service “Ayoba”. The chatbot is an artificial intelligence guide that assists users to navigate MTN’s MoMo services and provide other useful information.
This innovation leverages messaging and artificial intelligence to drive customer engagement and enhance their MTN MoMo experience, the company said on its website on Friday, June 7th 2019.
According to MTN Group President and CEO, Rob Shuter, “we are passionate about bringing the power of our mobile money solutions to more than 60 million customers across Africa over the next few years. Harnessing modern technologies like artificial intelligence can improve in scale, how MTN interacts with customers, enabling them to reach us anytime and anywhere, through a variety of channels including social networks and messaging applications. We can also harness the power of artificial intelligence to provide our customers with the right answers to their questions at the right time.”
The group CEO mentioned also that the telecom company is committed to improving financial inclusion with a range of solutions aimed at addressing the needs of various market segments.
“While MTN has made great strides in these areas, we will continue working to deliver our vision for MTN to become one of the largest Fintech players across our footprint,” Shuter added.
Checks by BusinessDay revealed that MTN Nigeria has applied for the Payment Service Bank (PSB) license to proposed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to enable it become a mobile money operator in a country that has one of the highest exclusion rate in the continent.
According to figures by Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the country’s telecommunications industry has a reach of 86 percent of the country, with 162.3 million customers (the single largest customer base of any industry in Nigeria).
This makes the industry till date, one of the most thriving sectors in the country and analysts have disclosed that it has the capabilities, including technology, infrastructure, distribution network and subscriber base.
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s telcos industry players have a combined presence in 773 local government areas across the country further emphasizing their ability to reach especially hard to reach areas of the country.
The communication service providing companies in Nigeria also have about 1,000,000 unique agents already in place selling airtime across the country, and analysts say this can quickly be converted to establish mobile money agent networks which can help reach out to the unbanked Nigerians especially those in the rural areas.
According to London based Group Special Mobile Association (GSMA), “from a regulatory perspective, one basic requirement for mobile money to succeed is to create an open and level playing field that includes non-bank mobile money providers such as Mobile Network Operators (MNOs).”
BusinessDay’s analysis of Nigeria’s peers who are driving financial inclusion through the Telco led model shows that the telecommunication company with the largest customer base and infrastructure also generates the highest revenue while also having dominance of the industry.
Kenya’s mobile money market for example has five players among which are: M-Pesa, Airtel Money, T-Kash, Equitel Money and Mobile Pay. Safaricom controls the lion’s share with 83.08 per cent of the market, Equitel 16.36 per cent and Airtel 0.56 per cent.
Telkom Kenya has 1,581 base stations, some of which are leased, while Airtel has 1,548. Combined, however they are not close to Safaricom which has 4,000 base stations.
East Africa’s biggest mobile-network operator, Safaricom Plc, developed one of the world’s first mobile phone-based money transfer services, and says 88 percent of its almost 30 million customers now use it.
This is not different in Ghana, as according to the figures from the country’s National Communications Authority (NCA), revealed that between 2012 and 2017,MTN Ghana has been the consistent market leader by number of subscriptions.
Endurance Okafor
