Competition in Africa's mobile money space is heating up. This week, we reported that Wave closed a $200 million Series A round which took the company's valuation to $1.7 billion and aimed to disrupt the telecom-led mobile money.
Third-party providers, mostly fintechs, have tried to capture some market share from these incumbents. Wave, however, wants to disrupt it. TechCrunch on Wave.
Today, Flutterwave has announced a mobile money partnership with MTN Group. This new partnership will enable Flutterwave to offer MTN Mobile Money as a payment method to its business customers.
This implies that businesses integrating Flutterwave in Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia can now receive payments via MTN Mobile Money (MoMo).
Mobile money has a promising future in Africa.
In recent years, Africa has witnessed an explosion in mobile penetration as smartphone adoption has risen rapidly. According to the GSMA, Africa will hit the half a billion mark of unique mobile subscribers this year, and the continent will reach 50% subscriber penetration by 2025.
Sub-Saharan Africa alone is responsible for more than 45% of the world’s mobile money accounts, with the number of account holders exceeding half a billion by 2020, as shared on Statista. This past year, up to $500 billion has moved through the accounts of 300 million active mobile money users in the region.
What they are saying
Commenting on the partnership, Olugbenga “GB” Agboola, Founder and CEO of Flutterwave, said: “Africa has one of the highest growth rates for mobile money adoption and e-commerce in the world. It makes sense that we help provide a seamless payment method to support and ensure African businesses reap the full benefits of the e-commerce boom in the region. Our goal has always been to grow a new wave of prosperity in Africa by creating more avenues for businesses in Africa to accept payments. With this partnership, we can achieve this while creating endless possibilities for our customers.”
Commenting on the collaboration, Serigne Dioum, MTN Group Chief Digital and Fintech Officer, said: “As we progress on our journey to becoming the largest fintech platform in Africa, we will empower millions of businesses to embrace e-commerce in our markets to accept digital payments from MoMo consumers. We believe this is an enabler to accelerating digitized payments in Africa. Building strong ecosystems through partnerships is central to our platform strategy, and we will continue to invest in expanding the reach of our platform to consumers and businesses in Africa.”
What next
The new partnership will further expand on Flutterwave’s previous collaboration with MTN, beyond Uganda and Rwanda – with the potential of deepening adoption of digital payments and e-commerce in Africa, a sector expected to reach $29 billion by 2022, according to Statista.
Sub-Saharan Africa in focus
GDP: $1.686 trillion in 2020 compared to $1.77 trillion in 2019
Population: 1.136 billion in 2020 compared to 1.107 billion in 2019
GDP per capita: $1,483 in 2020 compared to $1,559 in 2019
