E-Financial
MTN Group Fintech Hits Over 70m Users
Serigne Dioum, chief executive officer of MTN Group Fintech, has reaffirmed his outfit’s commitment to driving financial inclusion across Africa, leveraging innovative solutions to empower individuals and businesses.
Recounting the Group’s journey, he noted that it currently boasts of over 70 million customers and an ecosystem of more than 2 million merchants across 16 operations.
He also highlighted the company’s success in lending, with over $2 billion disbursed in loans to customers last year, stressing that it is working towards building Africa’s largest FinTech platform by
“Our FinTech journey began in 2007 in Uganda, and since then, we have expanded our footprint across 16 operations… From humble beginnings as a wallet business, we have diversified our services to include payment, international remittance, lending, and insurance… And now we have a business with more than 70 million users and more than 2 million merchants across our footprint, which is 16 operations.”
Despite significant growth, Mr. Diuom pointed out that 90 percent of transactions in Africa are still cash-based, indicating the vast untapped potential for digital financial services.
As such, he emphasised MTN’s role in addressing the prevalent cash-based transactions and low penetration of credit and insurance services through innovative solutions and strategic partnerships.
He added that MTN Group Fintech is leveraging new technologies such as blockchain and AI to enhance services and improve credit scoring.
“Our vision is to create a seamless ecosystem where anyone, from anywhere, can access financial services with ease. We think that the future for Africa, when it comes to Fintech is bright, because the African population is still growing, and the penetration of Fintech is still low. When it comes to fintech penetration, I think the number that comes to mind is that 90% of transactions are still cash-based.
“For us, we do not compete against any bank, but we compete against cash. And our work every day is to identify the use cases that are still touch base, and see how we can digitalize them for our platform,” he noted.