Flutterwave announces new mobile money partnership with MTN across Africa
In recent years, smartphones have become cheaper across Africa, and this has broadly contributed to parallel growth in mobile money penetration.
According to Statista, Sub-Saharan Africa alone is responsible for more than 45% of the world’s mobile money accounts. The number of account holders exceeded half a billion by 2020, and growth is expected to continue to 2025.
To further add, the GSMA’s Mobile Economy Report confirms that Africa will hit the half a billion mark of unique mobile subscribers this year, and the continent will reach 50% subscriber penetration by 2025.
With over 48.9 million active users and 581,514 merchants, MTN MoMo enables businesses to accept and make payments within the mobile money ecosystem.
Through this partnership, MTN and Flutterwave will positively contribute to the growing mobile money trend by increasing mobile money usage, and penetration in Africa to improve local economies and livelihoods as well as create opportunities for individuals and businesses across the continent.
The partnership will also enable Flutterwave to offer MTN Mobile Money as a payment method to its business customers.
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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 digitised 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.”
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.
