AFRICA – Ericsson, a multinational networking and telecommunications company, and the MTN Group, a mobile network operator, have strengthened their relationship to provide mobile banking services and financially empower millions of African citizens.
The alliance aims to increase financial inclusion from first-time consumers to high-end enterprise applications by leveraging MTN’s Mobile Money (MoMo) service on the Ericsson Wallet Platform.
Ericsson Wallet Platform conducts over 400 million mobile wallets and 2.8 billion transactions worth US$40 billion every month through communication service providers and financial institutions worldwide.
According to the companies, the cooperation extension also involves a move to public cloud deployments as well as the development of the Open API services platform, which will help accelerate financial innovation in Africa.
“It will give entrepreneurs an opportunity to develop revenue-generating applications and, by utilizing Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment, will enable an automated software development and deployment workflow for the MTN Mobile Money (MoMo) fintech platform across all of its African operations,” according to MTN.
According to the firms’ statement, the full suite of services would provide MTN’s African customers with access to a mobile connectivity-based financial ecosystem.
In addition to accelerating MTN’s goal of increasing financial inclusion for the unbanked, the service provider will provide innovative financial services to meet the fast-changing digital financial needs of individuals and businesses.
According to the parties, the platform places a strong emphasis on financial technology (FinTech), with focus areas including the growth of merchant and e-commerce payments, facilitating national and international money transfers among family members and others (remittance services), advancing banking solutions (BankTech), and providing insurance services (Insurtech).
The agreement was inked during a visit by senior MTN Group officials to Ericsson’s Group Headquarters in Kista, Sweden, where the two businesses addressed major strategic priorities and future collaboration.
Over 63 million MTN active users use its Mobile Money platform in some capacity across 16 African nations.
MTN MoMo’s yearly transaction value has nearly tripled from 2018, rising from US$76 billion to US$204 billion by 2022.
During the same period, transaction volumes climbed by about 300 percent, rising from 3.5 billion in 2018 to 12.7 billion in 2022.
Michael Wallis-Brown, head of mobile financial services at Ericsson, added that Ericsson’s collaboration with MTN is a world-leading example of mobile financial services’ ability to financially empower people and businesses, from giving the unbanked their first chance to control their finances, making it easier for women to access financial services, and promoting digital inclusion, to allowing more advanced users to access high-end services.
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