Flutterwave to offer MTN Mobile Money as a payment method in Africa

African fintech firm Flutterwave is partnering with MTN Group to enable mobile money payment across Africa.

Flutterwave announced the mobile money partnership with MTN Group, Africa’s largest telecommunications provider on Thursday. This will enable businesses that are integrating Flutterwave in Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia to receive payments via MTN Mobile Money (MoMo).

MTN MoMo is a fintech platform providing consumers and businesses with an electronic wallet, enabling electronic transfers and payments as well as access to digital and financial services. In late June 2021, MTN MoMo recorded 48.9 million active users and 581,514 merchants. The platform enables businesses to accept and make payments within the mobile money ecosystem. Through this new partnership, Flutterwave will offer MTN Mobile Money as a payment method to its business customers.  

Africa has witnessed an explosion in mobile penetration as smartphone adoption has risen rapidly. According to the GSMA, this year Africa will hit the half a billion mark of unique mobile subscribers 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.  With this partnership, MTN and Flutterwave intends to positively contribute to this 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.

According to Olugbenga “GB” Agboola, Founder and CEO of Flutterwave, '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.', he said.

MTN Group believes that this partnership will accelerate digital payments in Africa. In a separate remark, Serigne Dioum, the Chief Digital and Fintech Officer of the group 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.

Serigne stated that, '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.