The payment unit of MTN Nigeria Communications Plc – MoMo Payment Service Bank (MoMo PSB) has registered 2.4 million active (out of 4.2 million) MoMo wallets from May 19-June 30, 2022.
Karl Toriola, the chief executive officer at MTN Nigeria disclosed this in its financial result for the half year of 2022.
According to Toriola, the active MoMo wallets generated transaction volumes of approximately seven million within six weeks of operations.
“We achieved some important strategic milestones in the first half towards delivering our Ambition 2025 strategy. This includes the final approval for our MoMo PSB and the commencement of commercial operations on May 19, leveraging the solid foundation of our existing MoMo business,” He said
Toriola also said that they were pleased with the progress since the launch and excited about the prospects of their fintech business and driving financial inclusion in the country.
MTN’s PSB is positioned to enable millions of unbanked and underserved Nigerians to access a wide range of financial service products with an expansive agent network of over 166,000 agents and digitized partnership infrastructure.
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A PSB is a type of bank that operates on a smaller scale by harnessing technology services via mobile and agency banking to mobilize deposits and facilitate transfers from unbanked customers in rural areas and any location where they exist in Nigeria.
It also offers payments and remittance services, issue debit and prepaid cards; deploy automated teller machines (ATMs) and other technology-enabled banking services. In 2018, PSB operations were proposed by the CBN to help impact Nigeria’s financial inclusion drive.
And so far, there are already five PSBs operating in the country namely Hope PSB, Money Master PSB, 9 PSB, MTN’s MoMo and Airtel’s SmartCash.
The company’s financial results also highlighted that its active data users increased by 13.2 percent to 36.8 million in H1 2022, active fintech subscribers rose by 87.3 percent to 11.5 million, revenue grew by 20 percent to N950.1 billion and Profit after Tax (PAT) grew by 28.1 percent to N181.6 billion.
“Our financial performance during the period was underpinned by strong commercial momentum, driving broad-based growth across our key revenue lines such as data, fintech and digital services,” Toriola added.
“However, growth developed at a slower rate in Q2 mainly due to the restrictions arising from the new NIN-SIM directive, which came into effect on April 4. Consequently, service revenue grew by 19.9 percent, broadly in line with our medium-term growth guidance of ‘at least 20 percent,” He concluded.
