The spread of COVID-19 has accelerated the adoption of mobile financial services, which are increasingly being recognised as a tool to mitigate the use of cash in a world fighting the pandemic.

This trend has been supported by the move by many operators, including MTN Group, to waive or reduce certain fees to ease customers’ financial pressures amid a global economic contraction.

“To date, as part of MTN’s Y’ello Hope response to COVID-19, we have zero-rated 120 million peer-to-peer mobile money transactions with a value of approximately R43 billion,” says Serigne Dioum, MTN Group executive for mobile financial services. “This has enabled many consumers and businesses across our 16 MoMo markets to transact and accept payments remotely, allowing them to continue operating despite lockdowns.”

The operator believes mobile financial services have grown faster in Africa than anywhere else in the world.

“As many countries adopted partial or total lockdowns, we witnessed an evolution in the type and volume of mobile money transactions,” says Dioum. “We saw a significant increase in MoMo Pay merchant and bill payments despite an initial decline in mobile money agent transactions due to the restrictions. However, we have already started to see a gradual increase as restrictions have been eased.”

“These changes, triggered by COVID-19, have enabled the acceleration and scaling of cashless and digital economies. They support our ambition to transition to an end-to-end platform, creating a digital marketplace and connecting consumers to businesses, and businesses to businesses. We see this as a significant opportunity to change the outlook for affordable, inclusive, understandable and comprehensive financial services in Africa and the Middle East.”

MTN says its MoMo Pay offering is live in 10 markets, with 250 000 merchants, 2,1 million active users.

At the end of March 2020, the company had 35,1 million active MoMo customers, an increase of 0,4 million from December 2019.

In mid-May 2020 MTN stated that MoMo added 400 000 new subscribers and added “In the first quarter, we accelerated our MoMo agency network in Nigeria under our super-agent licence, adding 70 000 agents, to bring the total number of registered agents to 178 000.”