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MTN today announced that its mobile money service, MoMo will go live in January 2020, allowing customers to send, receive, save and spend money as well as pay for goods and services using their mobile phones.

The announcement comes as MTN finalised its engagements with all the relevant regulatory bodies and authorities including the South African Reserve Bank.

MTN welcomes the positive conclusion of these engagements and looks forward to making MoMo available to all consumers via USSD functionality on *120*151# (MTN customers can dial *151# for free) as well as via App download in the Google Play store and the Apple App store by 30 January 2020.

“The introduction of this mobile money service is a pivotal step in MTN’s strategy and represents MTN’s participation in the next phase of increasing convergence we are seeing between financial services and mobile technology,” says MTN SA CEO, Mr Godfrey Motsa.

“We have been deliberate in selecting best of breed technology to enable MoMo. To this end MoMo will run on the Ericsson Converged Wallet and we’re exciting to be partnering with them across the Group,” adds Motsa.

Says Felix Kamenga, MTN SA Chief Officer of Mobile Financial Services, “We are delighted to make this payments service available to South Africans as many of our people remain unbanked. Our research shows that approximately 11 million South African’s remain unbanked, while 50% of the adult population remain thinly served. MoMo aims to bridge this gap with this innovative mobile money offering, providing a payments solution that encourages financial inclusion.”

“MoMo has been through rigorous testing and we are confident that consumers will reap the benefits of our efforts in this regard.  Our investment in our network means that we able to evolve with the ever-changing Fin-Tech landscape, making us the best network for mobile financial service.”

Kamenga also points to MTN’s mobile money successes in other African countries. “We have learnt what to do as well as what not to do and we believe that MTN has significant footprint in South Africa to reach underbanked and underserved communities still heavily reliant on cash to transact.”

“This represents an MTN Group effort as we worked with our counterparts in other markets, tapping into technical and human resources available from established markets which made this journey easier,” he adds.

During the initial phase MoMo will only be available to MTN customers and offers basic services but promises further innovation in early 2020 that aims to bring even more South Africans into the digital economy.

Users of MoMo do not need to have an actual bank account but must be a South African Resident, 18 years or older, with a valid South African ID. The user also needs to be an active MTN customer to qualify for selected promotional offers.

Initial functionality of MoMo allows users to:

•    Send money to any working cell phone number in SA;
•    Buy prepaid services like electricity, data and SMS bundles.
•    Pay for purchases at selected till points.
•    Perform Cash In and Cash Out transactions at any MTN store or Mobile Money Agents.

No minimum balance will be required. There are no monthly finance charges and no automated debits.  MTN customers can get cash back every time they buy something at selected Merchants and there will be a promotional offer of 100% bonus for users who buy MTN Airtime bundles using MoMo will get a free SMS notification every time they use the service. Customers may visit nearest MTN store and speak to a MoMo Ambassador for more information.

We look forward to demonstrating these features to South African’s and media in the new year.

“We see MoMo playing a significant role to both the man on the street, by empowering our customers to make positive financial decisions, as well as the South African economy by enabling enterprise development at the formal and informal level,” concludes Kamenga.

MTN Group today announced that its instant messaging platform, Ayoba has reached 1 million monthly active users. Ayoba is an advanced communications application localised for African and Middle East consumer needs, under an independent Over the Top (OTT) brand with unique features for MTN customers. The app supports many local languages spoken across the MTN markets including isiZulu, isiXhosa, Pidgin, Yoruba, Swahili, Hausa, French and English.

MTN, together with its partners, is driven to improve access to affordable communications to ensure that people in its markets can reap the social, economic and developmental dividends of being online. Ayoba underscores this goal to bring more people into the digital world by providing them with affordable and simplified digital communication services.

Commenting on the milestone, MTN Group President and CEO, Rob Shuter said, “We believe that our customers in Africa and the Middle East deserve a communication platform that expresses our unique voice, honours our rich identity through local languages, and addresses our customers’ specific needs and challenges by offering a data-included offering for MTN users, Mobile Money transfers (coming soon) and locally relevant content via channels.”

The platform which was launched earlier this year is now operational in 8 MTN markets, namely: Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Congo Brazzaville, Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Afghanistan and South Africa. Ayoba is also available across multiple markets on the Google Play Store and via the Ayoba website www.ayoba.me as an OTT offering.

As part of continuous efforts to enhance its offerings, Ayoba will be adding more features in the future. “Ayoba is also working on building an open digital platform that will enable third party innovation. This will ensure that we offer a rich diversified experience on the platform, enabling us to deliver more value to our users, empower local developers and create local experiences that are optimised for local communities,” explains David Gilarranz, CEO MTN Digital.

Some of Ayoba’s key features and offerings are:

• Local languages: Ayoba is available in the top local languages in the markets where the offering has launched.
• Chat now: Users can instantly send and receive text and voice messages with any of their contacts regardless of device type or network.
• Security: End-to-end encryption means that messages in a conversation cannot be read by anyone else.
• Chat with everyone: Users can send SMS text messages with anyone in their contact list, regardless of whether they’ve installed Ayoba or not.
• Channels: Users can subscribe to Channels for locally relevant content across various categories.
• Money transfers: Users will be able to make and receive payments via Mobile Money (coming soon).

Gilarranz adds that in addition to the number of exciting innovations on the cards Ayoba plans to expand to the rest of MTN’s markets, and other territories across the globe. Before the end of the year, Ayoba will go live in Guinea Conakry, Liberia, Benin and Rwanda.

MTN Group today announced sustained momentum in its results for the 9 months to September 2019 with service revenue growing 9,6% and its EBITDA margin improving by 0,6% to 35,1%. During the quarter the group added 3,5m subscribers and now serves 244 million customers across its 21 markets.

Commenting on the update, MTN Group CEO Rob Shuter said: “Service revenue growth and improvements in our EBITDA margin continued into the third quarter. We remain committed to driving access to internet and financial services and in Q3 we added 4.7 million active data users and 2.2 million Mobile Money subscribers across the portfolio. Our Ayoba messaging platform is now available across five markets and is already recording 515,000 active users per month.”

Overall, solid performances in Nigeria and Ghana offset the headwinds in South Africa, which was impacted by the weaker consumer demand and changes in ICASA’s End User Subscriber Service Charter Regulations which have impacted out-of-bundle (OOB) usage. Notwithstanding these pressures, in the third quarter MTN South Africa saw an improving trend in both prepaid and enterprise service revenues. Consumer post-paid in South Africa remained strong in a competitive market with service revenue growing at 5,8%.

At June 2019 MTN had not recognised R393 million of unpaid revenue from its roaming agreement with Cell C and an impairment of R211 million had also been raised. Since the end of June 2019 to date, Cell C has made payments amounting to nearly R750 million, in line with an agreed payment plan.  MTN has continued its conservative accounting for the Cell C roaming contract and only payments receive during the third quarter were processed, and all against the outstanding balances as at June 2019. We continue to work with Cell C on an expanded network deal and are seeing good progress to date.

Providing an update of the asset realisation programme (ARP) MTN Group CFO Ralph Mupita said: “As at June 2019 we had achieved R2.1bn of the 3-year R15 billion target announced in March this year. We continue to make steady progress in this regard and, following American Towers Corporation’s announcement of its acquisition of Eaton Towers, we are in advanced discussions to dispose of our 49% holdings in ATC Ghana and ATC Uganda which we value at between R7bn and R8bn.

The post IPO lock up period of Jumia, in which we have an 18.9% stake has expired and, as at 29 October, this stake is valued at approximately R1.4 billion. We also continue to await regulatory processes for the redemption of MTN Nigeria preference shares that have a value of $315 million for MTN Group. Finally, Econet’s unsolicited offer to acquire our 53% stake in Mascom has been terminated following certain conditions of the sale not being met.”

The Group expects an improved performance in South Africa in 2020 as the effects of the End User regulation on OOB usage moderate, the enterprise division returns to growth and the Cell C situation stabilises. We are confident that in Nigeria we will maintain service revenue and EBITDA growth in line with the medium-term guidance. This will be delivered as we improve our data revenue performance with increased 4G coverage as we utilise our 800 Mhz spectrum. We are also pushing ahead with our mobile money strategy through the super-agent licence, with 66,282 registered agents currently and a target of 100,000 by year end.

Shuter concludes: “Although conditions have been tougher in the year, we have sustained our performance in 2019 and looking forward, we are focussed on executing our BRIGHT strategy to deliver sustainable growth in our operations and to simplify our portfolio to reduce risk and improve returns. We remain resolute and committed to building our digital operator strategy and delivering on our medium-term targets and dividend policy.

MTN Group is supporting AfroChampions’ second conference on Sustainable Green Growth and Industrialisation, taking place in Kigali, Rwanda. The conference which started on 8 October, and concludes on 11 October, aims to encourage collaborations and partnerships that will accelerate the transformation of Africa under the selected topic.

Speaking about this partnership MTN Group President and CEO, Rob Shuter, said: “Since inception 25 years ago, MTN has had the opportunity, together with our host countries and communities, to build a legacy of changing lives within the markets that we operate. Our We’re Good Together initiative celebrates this partnership approach and partnering with AfroChampions is another way in which MTN can play its part in harnessing economic growth in Africa.”

“MTN believes in the potential of an Africa whose nations pursue deeper trade, integration and cooperation. Looking forward, the African Continental Free Trade Agreement as well as interventions such as AfroChampions will ensure that the continent operates as a single Africa, building easier trading conditions for businesses and easier movement of goods and services and therefore stimulating economic activity across the continent,” added Shuter.