Africa’s largest mobile services provider, MTN, now also operates one of the continent’s largest mobile payment platforms, MoMo, says group president and CEO Ralph Mupita.Mupita outlined the ongoing evolution of the company’s financial services business in a recent episode of MTN’s thought-leadership vodcast series, The Yello Chair — watch it above. He detailed how the group is transitioning from an initial focus on rapidly building scale towards the monetisation of advanced services, such as lending.Advanced services drive fintech revenue growthMupita says the MoMo platform is operating at immense transaction scale across MTN’s footprint, supported by its extensive user and merchant network.This is reflected in the group’s interim results for the six months to June 2026, which show MoMo now has 70.8-million monthly active users and 2.3-million merchants accepting mobile money daily.The group processed over $330bn in transaction value during the first half of 2026, more than a third higher than the prior comparable period. This was spread across 13-billion individual transactions, translating to about 50,000 transactions per minute.Advanced services, including payments and lending, led overall fintech revenue growth in the period.Mupita also highlighted the value of strategic partnerships in supporting growth. Through its partnership with Mastercard, MTN’s fintech operation has been able to scale card issuance, with close to a million virtual and physical companion cards issued.Mastercard has been a major partner since early 2024, when it made a R3.8bn investment in MTN’s fintech business, which was valued at $5.2bn at the time.MTN Group president and CEO Ralph Mupita. (MTN Group) While transaction volumes are very high, revenue from the business came in at about R14.9bn for the period. Addressing the relationship between transaction value and revenue, Mupita highlighted the dynamics of the “take rate”, which broadly measures the revenue generated relative to the value moving through the ecosystem. “The goal is to build a massive ecosystem and determine how effectively we can monetise it and generate a return on our investment.”He contrasted the strategies pursued by start-ups with the realities facing an established enterprise, saying “different models apply”. “Start-ups may focus first on building scale and monetise the ecosystem over time. MTN is already a large business, so we need to grow scale and revenue together,” he said.Shifting revenue mixTo expand margins and improve monetisation, MTN is shifting its revenue mix away from basic services towards higher-value digital financial products. Mupita says: “Our business actually has two components. Basic services, such as cash-in and cash-out, remain a significant part of the business, but what we can charge for them will increasingly reduce. What you will see building up are the advanced services ... and ultimately these will drive our monetisation.”Basic services grew by about a tenth in the period. Yields are compressing, while regulatory pressures and the temporary suspension of airtime advance services in Nigeria weighed on the fintech business. On the other hand, advanced services like payments, e-commerce, cross-border remittances and banktech, including lending, are expected to support more sustainable monetisation. Revenue from these services grew by just under 32%, broadly in line with the roughly 33% increase in total transaction value.Preparing for a smartphone-led futureAs smartphone penetration rises across Africa, MTN is modernising MoMo’s underlying technical infrastructure and systems to move beyond the constraints of feature phones. Key to this strategy is upgrading from legacy USSD technology to app-based smartphone interfaces. At the same time, the group is rebuilding core systems to enable third-party developer integration, microservices, and embedded finance.“We’re investing in the systems and looking at platforms that are appropriate for the future. We’re moving towards a much more ‘appified’ experience as customers shift from voice-centric feature phones to smartphones,” says Mupita. Beyond tech investments, he emphasises the importance of domestic and regional interoperability between mobile money platforms and banks in unlocking long-term economic value for MTN.“We don’t have interoperability across all our markets and I’m a believer that [it] is key to really solve financial inclusion.”Mupita framed fintech not as a standalone venture, but as an indispensable pillar of MTN’s Ambition 2030 strategy.“It’s a very exciting space and it’s a key part of our ‘One MTN three-platform strategy’: connectivity, fintech, and the digital infrastructure,” he says. This article was sponsored by MTN.