MTN Group has pledged to deepen financial inclusion and bridge the digital divide across the African continent by scaling up its fintech business over the next three to five years. During that period, the pan-African telco has an ambition to double the size of the mobile money portfolio across Africa and broaden its product proposition beyond payments. Financial inclusion means that individuals have access to valuable and affordable financial products and get services that meet their needs; from transactions to payments, savings, credit and insurance. “We have the distribution footprint and best in-class connectivity infrastructure to host and develop the digital marketplace to facilitate a real change in Africa’s digital and financial inclusion,” says MTN in a statement. According to FinScope 2020 report on gender and financial inclusion, mobile money usage in Rwanda has greatly improved with 62 per cent men as registered users while 55 percent of women are registered users. However, the report states that the use is still low with 57 per cent women and 49 males using this service once a month. As of the end of 2021, the fintech business had processed 10 billion transactions worth $239.4 billion across the group – up by 56.8 per cent from 2020. In 2021, it recorded a number of financial transactions facilitated by MoMo open API, an interface that allows applications to talk to each other, which operates in 12 countries. New capabilities have been developed and built into the MoMo open API platform, including authentication and channel as a service, according to MTN, “These capabilities will be rolled out across the footprint in 2022.” “We have also enabled QR-based payments in the MoMo app, which has been well received by customers and merchants,” it added. The telco facilitated $239.4 billion in transactions per year on average on behalf of 56.8 million mobile financial services customers across 17 markets. It increased MoMo Pay merchants to 785,000 (of which some 50,000 are in Rwanda) in 2021 up from 440, 000 merchants in 2020 and made disbursement worth $1.1 billion through MoMo Kash, as well as a total of $2.2 billion in remittances. In an effort to drive a cashless economy, the government of Rwanda introduced an agreement between the telco and financial institutions to conduct the push-and-pull transactions free of charge. This has greatly contributed to the uptake of digital financial services. From the latest quarterly report (Q1, 2022), the telco’s service revenue increased by 24.5 per cent to Rwf50.9 billion year-on-year owing to the full reopening of the economy from Covid-19 related restrictions. At the end of 2021, MTN Rwanda reported an after-tax profit of Rwf22.4 billion, an increase of 10.9 per cent compared to the year before.
