![MTN is considering banking licences in selected African markets as it expands its MoMo business beyond payments into lending and other financial services.[Photo: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg via Getty Images]](https://ocdn.eu/pulscms/MDA_/3a93405d18354457c95d87241e9d5ad7.jpg)
Africa’s largest telecom operator, MTN Group, is considering obtaining banking licences in some of its African markets, a move that could significantly expand its role in financial services and put parts of its business into more direct competition with traditional banks.
- MTN is considering banking licences in selected African markets as it expands beyond mobile money into lending and other financial services.
- The licences could allow the telecom giant to take deposits and finance loans from its own balance sheet instead of depending mainly on banking partners.
- The shift comes as MTN’s MoMo platform grows into one of Africa’s largest financial ecosystems, processing more than $500 billion in transactions in 2025.
- Lending is already expanding rapidly across the platform, particularly in markets such as Ghana and Uganda.
The Johannesburg-headquartered company already offers payments, transfers, savings and credit-related products through its Mobile Money, or MoMo, ecosystem.
But its lending model has largely depended on partnerships with banks and other financial institutions that provide the capital behind loans offered to customers.
MTN is now examining whether that model should change in selected markets.
Group CEO Ralph Mupita said the company is considering licences that would allow it to take deposits and, eventually, use its own balance sheet to finance loans, Reuters reported.
Rather than pursuing banking licences across its entire African footprint, MTN is looking at markets where its mobile-money business has sufficient scale, including a large customer base and substantial funds moving through customer wallets.
The move would represent another step in MTN’s transformation from a traditional telecommunications company into a group increasingly built around connectivity, financial services and digital infrastructure.
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MTN’s $500 billion financial ecosystem
The potential banking push comes after years of rapid growth in MTN’s fintech operations. MTN said its Mobile Money platform had about 70 million customers across 16 markets at the end of 2025.
Customers completed more than 23 billion transactions during the year, with their combined value exceeding $500 billion.
Credit is becoming an increasingly important part of that ecosystem. MTN’s 2025 results show that the value of loans facilitated through its BankTech operations reached $3.5 billion, an increase of more than 80% from the previous year.
Ghana and Uganda, two of MTN’s more developed mobile-money markets, were major drivers of that growth, helped by marketplace lending and its MoMo Advance products.
The company also expanded lending products in Rwanda, Zambia, Cameroon and Congo-Brazzaville.
Uganda provides an indication of how extensive the financial-services offering is becoming. MTN MoMo customers there can already access several credit products, including MoKash, MoPesa, MoSente, XtraCash and MoMo Advance.
Obtaining the appropriate banking licences could change MTN’s position in this chain.
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Instead of primarily connecting customers with credit financed by third parties, MTN could potentially use deposits to support lending itself in approved markets.
That would also bring additional risks and regulatory obligations associated with operating more like a bank, meaning any expansion is expected to be gradual.
Nigeria is already part of MTN’s financial-services experiment
MTN has spent years securing different financial-services permissions across Africa, with regulations varying considerably between countries.
Nigeria, the group’s largest market by subscribers, is one example. MTN received final approval from the Central Bank of Nigeria in 2022 to operate MoMo Payment Service Bank.
The licence allowed MTN to expand financial services through its huge telecom distribution network, although Nigeria’s payment-service-bank framework is more restricted than a conventional commercial banking licence.
The distinction is important as MTN considers its next move.
A licence allowing the company to accept deposits and deploy its own balance sheet into lending would give it greater control over both sides of the financial relationship with customers.
It would also expose MTN more directly to credit risk, an area traditionally carried by the banks and financial institutions it partners with.
MTN’s fintech expansion comes as the rest of the group is also growing strongly. The company reported service revenue of R115.3 billion for the first half of 2026, up 17.5% in constant currency, with Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda among the operations leading growth.
MTN now serves more than 317 million subscribers across its markets.
Its growing scale means the next phase of MoMo is increasingly about extracting more value from customers already inside its network, moving beyond basic transfers and payments into credit, savings, insurance, investments and other financial products.
Banking licences could give MTN another route to do exactly that.
