MTN Group Chief Executive, Rob Shuter, says it plans to diversify its operations by seeking a licence to operate in Nigeria’s payment service banking space, thereby playing deeper in the Nigerian economy from next year.
Reuters quoted him as saying at a telecommunications conference in Cape Town, on Tuesday: “We will be applying for a payment service banking license in Nigeria in the next month or so, and if all goes according to plan, we will also be launching Mobile Money in Nigeria probably around Q2 of 2019.”
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has set a minimum capital base of N5bn for PSB licence, which watchers of the economy say may limit the play field to only telecommunications companies, especially given that they are supposed to operate in the rural areas (READ MORE).
However, the success of mobile money over in east Africa, pioneered by Kenya’s Safaricom, has convinced investors and the industry that financial services is the next growth area for telecoms to offset falling prices for basic services.
Shuter said the company would relaunch mobile money services in South Africa, two years after canning the service. The company has also bought a music streaming business Simfy, which Shuter said was “Africa’s leading music streaming business.”