BREAKING: MTN diversifies into banking, gets Nigeria final approval for MoMo Bank

Telecom firm, MTN, has received final approval from Nigerian regulators to run a payment service bank, the wireless carrier said in a regulatory filing on Monday.

“The date of commencement will be communicated to the CBN (Central Bank of Nigeria) in accordance with its requirements,” the telco heavyweight said of the bank to be known as MoMo Payment Service Bank Limited in a note to the Nigerian Exchange.

The approval, the fruit of well over two years of waiting for the permit, gives the local unit of Johannesburg-headquartered MTN Group Limited the leave to operate virtually all the services offered by conventional commercial banks with the exception of granting credit and processing foreign exchange transactions.

“We want to leverage the financial inclusion drive. We plan to give people who don’t have bank accounts or even ATM cards the opportunity to be able to do banking services,” a senior official of the telco said on condition that its identity will not be divulged because of the sensitivity of the matter,” Nigeria’s biggest company by revenue.

“And we are leveraging on our size. When we have subscribers of over 70 million spread across Nigeria with our infrastructural spread, we are well-positioned to cover everywhere. That’s exactly what we want to achieve.”

MTN Nigeria and Airtel Africa, who got an approval-in-principle last November to operate in the same space, will to tap Nigeria’s unbanked adult population of 38 million people, who according to Abuja-based media research house and data analytics firm, had N26.2 trillion last year alone, a move that will pit both telcos against traditional banks in getting a slice of the market.

Details later…

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