In spite of the growth and market size of Nigeria’s financial technology services, Airtel Africa has chosen Fintechs from Ghana and Zimbabwe to grow its mobile money business in Africa.
It was gathered in a recent statement made available that Airtel Africa is actively growing its mobile money business through investm
With above $300 million already generated via the shares for capital initiative, Airtel has been agreeing deals that will put the funds in good use. Part of the fund is expected to be channeled into leveraging the expertise of Fintech startups.
According to the financials released by the company recently, the deal that has been sealed is with Mukuru, a Zimbabwe firm that helps facilitate payment transfer; and Ghana’s Fintech company, Asante.
Though the worth of the deals were not disclosed, it was reliably gathered that Airtel has been actively collaborating with the startups since last year alongside international payment outfits like MoneyGram and WorldRemit.
Also Samsung, Standard Chartered and Mastercard are involved in the growth partnership.
While talking about some of the deals through a statement, Airtel said: “Through these partnerships, more than 21 million Airtel Money customers in 12 countries can transfer and receive funds across the globe directly from and into their mobile money wallets on their phone.
“Mobile money service alliances with these leading international money transfer or remittance service providers will extensively enhance customer access to the digital world.”
A major country where Airtel mobile money carries out its business is Nigeria, but Fintech startups in Nigeria are missing out despite the fact that they hold a sway over the African Fintech market.
Since the digital payment and transfer boom, network providers have been forging ahead in the nascent market, with MTN Nigeria establishing MoMo, its mobile money service.
MTN embarked on the mobile money journey alone without any known partnership or strategic deals with any player in the market, while Airtel has signed partnership agreement to expand its reach in the developing mobile money market.
The partnership is working for Airtel Africa, which revealed that, “Mobile money continues to be one of our fastest growing service segments, delivering revenue growth of 35.5% for the year.
“It is an increasingly important part of our business, delivering $51bn of annualised (Q4’21) transaction value and accounting for 10.6% of total revenue in Q4’21.”
