Determined to explore other investment opportunities to buoy its earnings in Nigeria, MTN Group on Tuesday announced plans to apply for mobile payment banking licence in the country.
The South African mobile telecom operator said that on obtaining the licence, it would launch a mobile payment service in Africa’s biggest economy by the second quarter of 2019.
MTN Group chief executive, Rob Shuter, was quoted by Reuters as making the disclosure while addressing a conference in Cape Town on Tuesday, Reuters reported.
He said: “We will be applying for a payment service banking licence in Nigeria in the next month or so, and if all goes according to plan, we will also be launching Mobile Money in Nigeria probably around Q2 of 2019.”
Shuter also said that the company would re-launch mobile money services in South Africa, two years after suspending the service.
However, the CEO did not give details about MTN’s plans to re-launch mobile money in South Africa, a market where about 80 percent of the population already has access to traditional banking services.
Commenting on the planned acquisition of mobile money licence by the telco in Nigeria, Fund Manager at Vestact, which owns shares in MTN Byron Lotter, said the plan promised a huge opportunity for MTN, adding however that the company is “being held hostage by this $10.1bn demand because their business is too big to leave.”
Shuter’s announcement came after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) announced that it would allow telecoms companies to provide banking services as part of the current financial inclusion strategy to give millions of Nigerians without bank accounts access to mobile money services.
Before now, some of the network providers in the country, including Globacom, Ntel and 9mobile had expressed interest in the mobile money licences.
