MTN Nigeria says income from its main MoMo operation more than doubled across the first nine months of 2026, yet the headline conceals a steep drop in the number of live wallets. This matters because MTN Group is set to acquire 60% of the mobile money unit, a sale that still awaits regulators' approval. Anyone assessing MTN MoMo fintech revenue should read the growth figure next to the user numbers.
MTN reported that total income from fintech slid 25.9% to ₦97.5 billion, down from ₦131.6 billion a year before. The central MoMo line, on the other hand, grew 102.2%. Both figures are accurate, and each describes a different slice of the same division.
Two stories inside MTN MoMo fintech revenue
The overall decline in MTN MoMo fintech revenue comes down to Xtratime, MTN's service that advances airtime and data on credit. Technext24 describes Xtratime as the overwhelming driver of MTN Nigeria's reported fintech revenue. MTN suspended it on 16 April so that fresh compliance arrangements could be set up under Nigeria's rules on lending, and it returned with several partners sharing the model.
A recovery is in progress. The company says Xtratime income in the third quarter was 78.5% higher than in the second. Even so, fintech accounted for just 2.11% of MTN Nigeria's ₦4.61 trillion revenue over the nine months, so MTN MoMo fintech revenue remains a small slice of the total. MTN expects the credit product to be back at its anticipated level by the close of November 2026.
There is a cost attached to the recovery in MTN MoMo fintech revenue. TechCentral reports that the expected credit loss charge on trade receivables rose to ₦15 billion from ₦2.4 billion, mainly because of a reassessment of Xtratime receivables.
Analysts caution against reading too much into the MoMo surge. Techbooky quotes the warning that "treating the 102.2% figure as growth for all of fintech would overstate the recovery." That caution matters when judging MTN MoMo fintech revenue.
The wallet count tells a different story
MTN says MoMo had 3.2 million monthly active users when the third quarter closed. That is hard to square with the five million live wallets it reported at the half-year. Condia notes that the Q3 statements show a 36% drop, with a footnote pinning it on the platform move and the shutdown of legacy wallets.
Set against December, the trend is also downward. TechCentral says live wallets fell from 3.8 million at the close of 2025 to 3.2 million at the close of September. The user base is therefore smaller than at the start of the year, even though income from the main business doubled.
MTN's explanation is that wallets are being shifted onto a different platform. In August, MoMo PSB was moved to Alipay+, after a June tie-up between MTN Group Fintech and Ant International. The company expects user numbers to climb as current wallets are carried across and fresh customers sign up.
Chief executive Karl Toriola struck a confident note on engagement. "Underlying engagement remained robust, with Q3 transaction volumes up 69.1% on Q2," he said.
Where the MoMo growth comes from
The jump in revenue relies heavily on float income, the interest earned on cash sitting in customers' wallets. MTN said balances in wallets rose more than fourfold to ₦43.8 billion from December 2025. The company credits this to greater uptake and success in gathering deposits, not to any shift in how the products are structured or priced.
Condia puts the figures in sharper focus. Customer deposits stood at ₦43.82 billion on 30 September against ₦9.84 billion in December, and ₦42.55 billion of that, or 97%, sits in treasury bills. Condia also calculates that ₦29.8 billion of the ₦34.0 billion rise arrived in the third quarter alone.
That prompts a question the statements leave open: how did deposits triple within a quarter while the count of live wallets shrank? MTN itself observed that deposits were mostly short-term and used for transactions, and could be withdrawn on demand. Money that can walk out at any moment is a flimsier base for float income than it first looks.
The sale to MTN Group and what to watch
The restructuring won shareholder approval on 30 April. Under the arrangement, MTN Group will take 60% of the financial technology units through its dedicated fintech investment vehicle, leaving MTN Nigeria with the other 40%. Condia reports that the stake carried a value of ₦95.5 billion, which it describes as 2.1x the December 2025 carrying value, and that KPMG supplied a fairness opinion.
The transaction had not been completed by 30 September and still requires regulatory sign-off. Condia adds that the ₦95.5 billion valuation sits about 31% under the ₦137.95 billion MTN Nigeria had put in by September, since the premium is measured against a written-down book value. Toriola said the structural separation is moving forward, pending those approvals.
The rest of the company is doing well. According to New Telegraph, nine-month service revenue rose 23.7% to ₦4.6 trillion, profit after tax rose 55.3% to ₦1.2 trillion and subscribers grew 10.9% to 94.7 million.
Anyone judging how the MoMo drive is going can look at three plain questions
- Once the migration has settled, do the number of users who are active start climbing?
- Can the credit service recover without suffering yet another outage?
- And are the deposits that boosted float income still sitting in the wallets?
