Big changes coming to MTN’s crown jewel

MTN is finalising the spinoffs of its Nigerian and Ugandan financial-technology operations as part of a reorganisation of its mobile-money unit to allow Mastercard and other strategic buyers to take minority stakes in its fintech businesses. 

“The separations are complex as we have to minimise value leakage,” CEO Ralph Mupita said at the company’s capital markets day on Wednesday.

“On fintech, we are open to minority shareholding all the way up to 30%; we are not driven by IPO timelines.”

To further build and scale its fintech business, MTN is seeking additional deals and targeted partnerships.

The company this week said it is working with Ant, the Chinese unit of Alipay, to revamp its mobile-money ecosystem, Momo. 

The Johannesburg-based telecommunications company must separate the fintech units as part of a process to complete a deal it struck with Mastercard in 2023.

MTN will also consider other transactions for minority stakes in the businesses, Mupita said previously.

Indian billionaire Sunil Mittal’s Airtel Africa is in the process of preparing its African mobile-money business for an initial public offering that could value that business at as much as $10 billion, Bloomberg previously reported. 

Africa’s young, tech-savvy population is increasingly using mobile phones to bridge gaps in services, including banking. That’s opened a lucrative and fast-growing space in the fintech sector for wireless carriers.

The fintech business generated R28.8 billion last year and processed about $500 billion in transactions across the 14 markets where it holds licenses for these services, MTN Fintech CEO Serigne Dioum said.

The company is planning to “augment” its licenses in certain markets to be able to deliver loans to customers and lend against its balance sheet, he said.

In Nigeria, MTN’s license didn’t allow for international remittance, lending and some payments, said Dioum. That allowed some nascent players with licenses such as OPay and PalmPay to pick up market share, he said. 

Opportunities in Nigeria remain significant, and MTN is in the process of augmenting its banking license in the country with more than 200 million people, he said, adding that the company will go live with its Alipay platform in the coming weeks. 

MTN plans to invest between $10 billion and $12.5 billion through 2030 to scale up across the group while also trimming about R12 billion in costs over the next three years, Chief Financial Officer Tsholofelo Molefe said.