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MoMo reached 5 million active wallets in H1 2026 as MTN Nigeria awaits approvals to separate its fintech units, after a brief lending pause.
MoMo added 1.3 million wallets in the first half of 2026, taking total active wallets to 5 million. A wallet here means a mobile money account that can store value and move funds, similar to a bank account but usually tied to a phone number.
MTN Nigeria said revenue from its fintech business rose 132% year on year. Still, fintech service revenue fell 7.2% in the same period. The company linked the decline to the suspension of airtime and data lending earlier in the year.
Airtime and data lending are short-term credit products, where customers borrow mobile airtime or data and repay later. MTN expects growth in fintech service revenue to pick up in the second half of 2026 after those services resumed.
Alongside the wallet growth, MTN is progressing plans to separate its fintech operations from its core telecom business. Shareholders approved the transaction on April 30, 2026, and the company is now awaiting regulatory approvals.
Under the proposed structure, MoMo Payment Service Bank and Yello Digital Financial Services will stop being subsidiaries of MTN Nigeria once the deal closes.
For MTN, MoMo’s growth supports a broader shift where telecom operators earn more from financial services, payments, and merchant transactions, not only voice and data.
The planned separation could make it easier to raise capital for the fintech unit, ring-fence risk, and improve balance sheet flexibility. It can also help investors value the fintech business more directly, instead of bundling it inside a telecom operator.
For Nigeria’s payments market, the update is another sign that wallet adoption is still rising, even as regulators and operators tighten rules around digital credit and lending products.
Primary Source: Condia
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