MTN Nigeria’s fintech subsidiary, MoMo Payment Service Bank (MoMo PSB) Limited, formally launched operations yesterday after receiving final clearance for a Payment Service Bank (PSB) license from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
This comes after a successful pilot that began on May 16, 2022, in honor of MTN’s GSM operations beginning on May 16, 2001, and its listing by introduction on the Nigerian Exchange Limited on May 16, 2019, as well as a critical milestone in the company’s Ambition 2025 strategic targets.
Airtel Africa’s subsidiary SmartCash PSB also declared in a stock market statement that it has begun providing services through select retail shops, with ambitions to expand across Nigeria in the coming months.
After receiving in-principle permission in 2021, Airtel Africa acquired a complete Payment Service Bank license from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) through its subsidiary in April.
MTN said a market activation took place yesterday in Marina, Lagos, where traders were shown how to start a MoMo wallet by dialing *671# on any network, send money to any mobile phone in the country, buy airtime/data, and pay bills.
MTN claims that MoMo PSB will enable millions of unbanked and underserved Nigerians to access a wide range of financial services through its extensive agent network of over 166,000 active agents and digitized partnership infrastructure.
MTN stated that MoMo PSB will expand its agent network to serve Nigerians across the country, offering a wide range of payment options and eliminating friction from routine payment by digitizing cash payments.
“We are grateful to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for their cooperation and guidance throughout the process,” MTN Nigeria CEO Karl Toriola stated. MTN Nigeria has reached a significant milestone in its mission to facilitate the delivery of financial services to all Nigerians. People in rural and isolated corners of the country, as well as those in urban centers and markets, are still excluded from the financial system,” he noted.
“Providing easy to use, accessible, and inexpensive financial services to all Nigerians is crucial to executing the CBN’s financial inclusion plan and the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy’s digital inclusion agenda,” MoMo PSB CEO Usoro Usoro stated. We are pleased about the potential to collaborate with key institutions across multiple industries to co-create and expand access across the country.”
According to Airtel Africa, the license permits it to provide “a full range of mobile money services,” as it called them at the time.
Segun Ogunsanya, CEO of Airtel Africa, promised to revolutionize financial services in Nigeria and promote inclusion.
“This is the beginning of our journey to revolutionize the financial services landscape in Nigeria,” Ogunsanya said in a statement, adding that it would reach “the millions of Nigerians who do not currently have access to financial services by delivering current and savings accounts, payment and remittance services, debit and prepayment cards, and more sophisticated services to the millions of Nigerians who do not currently have access to financial services.”
