MTN Ghana’s MoMo revenue exceeds that of Nigeria’s biggest banks by far, according to research by telecom analyst Eric Osiakwan, MTN Ghana’s mobile money income in 2020 would significantly exceed that of the top Nigerian banks.
FBN, Access Bank, UBA, and Zenith Bank were among the Nigerian banks. In 2020, Ghana’s leading mobile network generated $216.4 million in revenue from MoMo transactions.
This compares to FBN ($141.2m), Access Bank ($136.8m), UBA ($130.2m), and Zenith Bank ($116.1m) digital transactions. MTN Ghana ($112.7 million) makes more money than MTN Nigeria.
“Are Mobile Operators the Next Fintech Startups?” asks the title of the research. Because the majority of transactions were done through their networks, mobile network operators’ MoMo businesses generated the most substantial profits during the covid-19 epidemic.
In the first quarter of 2021, MoMo transactions in Ghana outstripped cheques by $40 billion. According to the article, this sent shockwaves across the Ghanaian financial industry, and banks are now creating alliances as they worry for their future.
Meanwhile, according to the article, Ghana is moving closer to creating a state-backed digital currency to combat the volatility of uncontrolled digital currencies like bitcoin.
The value of M-Pesa transactions in Kenya grew by 32.9% year-on-year to $82 billon in 2020, whilst the volume of M-Pesa transactions grew by 14.9%, to 5.12 billion transactions.
By the end of June 2020, Orange’s MoMo service had grown by 18.9%, bringing the total number of active subscribers to 19.6 million. The MoMo payment rate accounts for 87 percent of Kenya’s Gross Domestic Product. The figure in Ghana is 82 percent.
After China, where mobile payments account for 125 percent of GDP, these are the highest ratios in the world, according to the research (this includes person-to-person transactions).
South Africa, on the other hand, where Vodacom and MTN are based, has had little success with mobile money, owing to the country’s well-established banking system, with 70 percent of people having a transaction account.
Earlier attempts by both carriers to deploy MoMo in South Africa failed, but MTN reintroduced its MoMo service with UBank in February 2020, claiming two million additional subscribers in December 2020.
MoMo outstripping bank transactions
According to the study, all major mobile network providers now have MoMo operations, which have become their new cash cow at the expense of banks.
It explained that in some markets, such as East Africa, mobile network operators, such as Safaricom, are directly competing with traditional banks by offering “banking services,” adding that “in Nigeria, this has not been the case until the third quarter of 2020, when the Central Bank of Nigeria issued final approval to Glo, 9Mobile, and Unified Payment subsidiaries to operate as Payment Service Banks.”
According to the research, banks in Ghana, such as Fidelity Ghana and Ecobank Ghana, were able to persuade authorities to “force” mobile network carriers to collaborate with them to supply banking-related services.
