MTN Group increased its overall fintech revenue in the nine months ended September, buoyed by wins in Ghana, Uganda, Benin, Cameroon, and Rwanda.

The five countries are critical fintech markets for MTN Group, which aims to develop the continent's largest and most valuable fintech platform.

Africa’s largest telecom provider reported performance for the period, stating fintech revenue sustained its growth trajectory and increased by 22.1% year-on-year (YoY), with strong growth in ‘advanced services’ (up 61.8%) relative to ‘basic services’ (up 21.4%).

MoMo Advance is a type of loan product, and basic services enables MoMo wallet holders to store funds, send and receive money, make payments, and do several other transactions.

In the period, the contribution of advanced services to total fintech revenue rose to 19.8% (up 4.9 percentage points).

In the period, it said active Mobile Money (MoMo) users increased by 0.7% to 63.5 million; largely driven by Ghana, Uganda, Benin, Cameroon and Rwanda.

Agents and merchants grew by 10.8% and 78.8%, to 1.3 million and 1.8 million respectively; with Nigeria a key driver of merchant additions, particularly in third quarter (Q3).

“The development of our overall fintech ecosystem remained robust with a 33.9% increase in transaction volumes to 12.7 billion transactions, and transaction value up by 57.1% to $203.7 billion,” said Ralph Mupita, CEO, MTN Group.

Turning to other key fintech verticals, Mupita said: “Our payments and e-commerce ecosystem grew strongly, as we leveraged our consumer and merchant footprint. The total value of merchant payments made through MoMo rose by 49.8% YoY to $11.8 billion.”

In banktech, he said, MTN Group facilitated a total loan value of $2.0 billion, up 169.6%, as the company capitalised on its scaled mobile wallet business, data and customer footprint.

“Uganda and Ghana were the key drivers of the performance, with strong growth in loan users,” he said.

Mupita said that the total value of remittances grew by 63.5% YoY to $2.4 billion, driven by growth in the ‘number of active corridors’ and ‘focused marketing awareness efforts and improved customer experience’.

He added: “Outbound corridors grew by 59% to 124 and inbound corridors rose to 492 (up 15%). In Q3, international remittance services were launched in South Africa and Nigeria, providing a low-cost service that enables our customers to share in the benefits of formal financial services.”

Addressing the performance of MTN Group’s insurtech platform aYo, he said it reported 12.7% YoY revenue growth.

According to Mupita, this was driven by the group’s higher average revenue per policy focus and new revenue streams.

“In South Africa, we rolled out an embedded product called MTN Free4U Funeral Khava, and additional features are planned for release in Q4,” he noted.