MTN Nigeria's mobile money arm, MoMo PSB, moved to a new platform in August 2026. The upgrade came through a partnership between MTN Group Fintech and Ant International, the payments and fintech arm of China's Ant Group, which operates Alipay+. The two companies had announced the tie-up in June 2026, with the goal of improving transaction speed and reliability for MoMo users across Nigeria.
The platform switch is part of a broader push to grow MTN's fintech business, but the numbers tell a sobering story for now. Fintech revenue dropped 25.91% to 97.5 billion naira in the nine months ended September 2026, largely because MTN suspended its airtime and data credit service, Xtratime, from mid-April through June while it built out a new compliance framework under Nigeria's lending rules. That one service has proven to be the engine of the whole fintech operation, and pulling it offline left a visible hole.
Xtratime came back under a new multi-partner model and showed real momentum in the third quarter, with revenue climbing 78.5% compared to Q2. Even so, fintech contributed just 2.11% of MTN Nigeria's total nine-month revenue of 4.61 trillion naira. CEO Karl Toriola described the Alipay+ infrastructure as built for reliability and scale, saying it gives MoMo PSB "the foundation to become a scaled digital financial services platform."
The gap between that ambition and the current contribution is the real story to watch as the fourth quarter closes out.
Originally published by TechCabal.