Nigeria: MTN Group Fintech CEO Reaffirms Unwavering Commitment to Enhance Financial Inclusion Across Africa

Serigne Dioum, CEO of MTN Group Fintech, has reaffirmed the company’s unwavering commitment to enhancing financial inclusion throughout Africa. By harnessing innovative solutions, MTN aims to empower both individuals and businesses across the continent.

Dioum highlighted the group’s impressive journey, which now includes over 70 million customers and a network of more than 2 million merchants spanning 16 countries.

He also pointed to MTN’s significant success in the lending market, with over $2 billion in loans disbursed to customers in the past year alone.

Dioum underscored MTN’s vision of establishing Africa’s premier fintech platform, uniquely developed by Africans to serve the needs of the African population.

In his words,

“Our FinTech journey began in 2007 in Uganda, and since then, we have expanded our footprint across 16 operations. From humble beginnings as a wallet business, we have diversified our services to include payment, inter­national remittance, lending, and insurance… And now we have a business with more than 70 mil­lion users and more than 2 million merchants across our footprint, which is 16 operations.”

Despite significant growth, Mr. Diuom pointed out that 90 percent of transactions in Africa are still cash-based, indicating the vast untapped potential for digital financial services. As such, he emphasized MTN’s role in addressing the prevalent cash-based transactions and low penetration of credit and insurance services through in­novative solutions and strategic partnerships. He added that MTN Group Fintech is leveraging new technol­ogies such as blockchain and AI to enhance services and improve credit scoring.

“Our vision is to create a seamless ecosystem where any­one, from anywhere, can access financial services with ease. We think that the future for Africa, when it comes to Fintech is bright, because the African population is still growing, and the penetration of Fintech is still low. When it comes to fintech penetration, I think the number that comes to mind is that 90% of transactions are still cash-based.

“For us, we do not compete against any bank, but we compete against cash. And our work every day is to identify the use cases that are still touch base, and see how we can digitalize them for our platform,” he noted.