👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – Airtel bets on itself

If you’re Nigerian and you’ve ever had a serious mishap using MTN’s telecom service—like logging off a meeting or embarrassingly turning off your video during an interview so your internet spares your blushes—then you’d have asked, at least once, is MTN even serious about doing this telecom business?

Or maybe it’s just us and we had to dramatise for effect.

During the last decade, MTN made most of its money from voice calls—71% of revenue in 2014 came from it. However, voice revenue has slowed down over the years, dropping to 39% in 2023 and 32% in 2024. Last year, voice brought in R57.2 billion ($3.1 billion). By Q1 2025, it fell again by 0.1% year-on-year. On the other hand, its data revenue and digital services have taken off.

Soon, as digital services began to expand, it opened up many sectors with it, such as fintech, entertainment, instant messaging, and education. MTN spotted these trends, and as a mature company, the telecom operator has dipped its fingers into all these businesses in hopes of increasing revenue and staying ahead of the curve. 

Already, as a data and infrastructure provider, MTN not only wanted to own the bakery, it was going after the bread, too. This was why it deepened its focus on fintech; it started with MoMo, which is a key business in some of its markets, and now, BankTech (which launched in August 2023)—a B2B platform that gives fintechs and digital platforms the tools (via APIs) to offer loans, savings, and insurance—is entrenching itself as an important money-spinner. 

For BankTech, MTN provides the liquidity, particularly in markets where it is permitted to offer digital loans. In Q1 2025, the group reported that it disbursed $592 million in loans.

Juggling multiple ventures is no small task, but MTN’s scale and capital give it room to experiment. While it may not be as sleek as younger fintech startups, its reach and financial muscle make up for it. And for the businesses using its rails, what matters most is access, not who built the pipes.

Yet, Nigerians can rest easy knowing MTN still has interest in offering solid telecom services after Q1 core network reinforcements.