MTN Nigeria, Nigeria’s largest telecom company, recorded giant strides in the mobile money ecosystem in 2019.
Following the successful award of a Super-Agent License, Y’ello Digital Financial Services, “YDFS,” a subsidiary of MTN Nigeria opened its doors, announcing the launch of its super-agent network service named ‘MoMo Agent’ at an event in Abuja in August 2019.
Facts have emerged that MoMo Agents registered about 108,000 agents across the country since August when it began the super-agent service.
The company, in its full-year audited financial report for the period, ended December 31, 2019, said the agent network served almost one million customers in the first four months of operation.
The telecom company said it planned to expand its agent network this year and that they will continue to make good progress with the expansion of their super-agent network.
MTN said they are confident that the expanded service offerings will position them to effectively drive broader financial inclusion as well as roll out the payment service bank seamlessly, once they receive their licence.
According to the company, it was focused on building its subscriber base during the year, which led to the growth of 10.5 per cent increase to a total of 64.3 million subscribers.
MTN said many of its initiatives led to 34.9 per cent growth in active data subscribers, which rose to 25.2 million with the ratio of active data users to total mobile subscribers increasing by 7.1pp to 39.2 per cent in 2019 with strong potential for future growth.
The telecom stressed that their voice revenue growth remained healthy at 8.4 per cent and accounted for 72.7 per cent of service revenue while voice traffic increased by 7.6 per cent, supporting revenue growth.
They have seen a rapid acceleration in data revenue growth enabled by greater population coverage, a revamp of their data portfolio and initiatives to drive 4G device penetration.
They added 5.3 million new smartphones to their network, bringing smartphone penetration to 41.8 per cent of our base, while data traffic rose by 85.8 per cent.
MTN said interventions during the year helped them to drive a 42.4 per cent increase in data revenue for the year 63.1 per cent Year-on-Year in Q4 2019 and their data contributed 18.8 per cent to service revenue, up 3.9pp from 14.9 per cent in 2018.
The company said Digital revenue gained momentum as they started to see quarterly growth from Q3 2019, they further focused on building a sustainable active user base for our digital business, while improving the customer journey and experience on value-added services.
In Q4 2019, they launched MusicTime, one of their flagship digital offerings with active base for their digital subscriptions surpassing 2.1 million users during the year, as they continue to build a critical mass for their portfolio of digital products and services.
On a sequential Quarter-on-Quarter basis, digital revenue increased by 23.0 per cent and we target sustained growth into 2020.
The telecom firm said it planned to expand its 4G network coverage to deliver high-speed Internet to more people nation-wide as data revenue growth remained its focus.
MTN said it recognized the potential impact of Coronavirus outbreak worldwide on its supply chain, pledging to monitor unfolding developments and explore multiple scenarios to mitigate the impact.
