Information and communications technology giants Ericsson and MTN Group have strengthened their partnership to broaden the scope of financial inclusion across Africa by using MTN’s Mobile Money (MoMo) service on the Ericsson Wallet Platform.

The new agreement, which is expected to enhance mobile financial services across Africa, will unlock a comprehensive suite of services, providing MTN’s customer base across Africa with access to a mobile connectivity-based financial ecosystem.

MTN MoMo, powered by the Ericsson Wallet Platform, enables individuals and businesses to conduct secure and convenient banking and payment transactions, including the management of funds, paying merchants and utility providers and accessing loans and insurance services, with ease, directly from their mobile devices.

In a joint statement issued on Tuesday, the companies pointed out that a strong emphasis is also placed on financial technology (fintech), with focus areas including the growth of merchant and e-commerce payments, facilitating national and remittance services and international money transfers, advancing banking solutions and offering insurance services.

Further, the partnership extension includes a transition to public cloud deployments and the refinement of the Open API services framework, fostering the acceleration of fintech innovation in Africa.

This provides entrepreneurs an opportunity to develop revenue-generating applications and by using continuous integration/continuous deployment, will enable an automated software development and deployment workflow for the MTN MoMo fintech platform across all of its African operations.

“MTN MoMo offers a spectrum of mobile financial services, encompassing money transfers, payments, savings and loans for every consumer, actively driving financial inclusion and advancing economic empowerment across the continent. Our collaboration with Ericsson is a significant milestone in the execution of our Ambition 2025 – building the largest and most valuable platform business and creating shared value for our customers in Africa,” said MTN Group chief fintech officer Serigne Dioum.

Currently, more than 63-million MTN active subscribers across 16 African countries already use the MoMo platform, with its yearly transaction value having nearly tripled since 2018, from $76-billion to $204 billion in 2022.

Transaction volumes increased by almost 300% during the same period, from 3.5-billion transactions in 2018 to 12.7-billion in 2022.

Meanwhile, the Ericsson Wallet Platform supports more than 400-million registered mobile wallets and processes more than 2.8-billion transactions, worth more than $40-billion, every month through communication service providers and financial institutions globally.

“Ericsson’s partnership with MTN is a world-leading example of the ability of mobile financial services to financially empower people and business, from giving the unbanked their first opportunity to control their finances, making it easier for women to access financial services and promoting digital inclusion, to enabling more advanced users to access high-end services,” added Ericsson mobile financial services head Michael Wallis-Brown.

“This model can be applied in any market anywhere in the world to genuinely empower mobile subscribers of all financial standings. Our valued MTN partnership also supports Ericsson's AfricaInMotion vision to promote a sustainable and connected Africa.”

The agreement was signed during a visit by senior MTN Group executives to Ericsson’s group headquarters in Kista, Sweden, where key strategic priorities and collaboration between the two companies was discussed.