South African telecommunications giant MTN Group has continued partnering with various global companies as it drives its financial technology (fintech) and digital transformation ambitions and modernises its core network.

MTN signed a multi-market agreement with global technology company Mastercard to unlock “a new era” of collaboration to connect millions of people and small businesses across Africa with digital tools to transact through secure mobile payments and expand access to the cashless digital economy.

This will drive the acceleration of the mobile money (MoMo) ecosystem in Africa across 13 markets, with the partners set to launch a prepaid virtual card tailored for MTN's MoMo customers, granting them access to over 100-million acceptance points worldwide, as well as empower MoMo merchants to seamlessly accept card payments, enhancing the platform's instant cross-border money remittance services and capabilities.

The collaboration will help strengthen local infrastructure for digital payments, support potential expansion of transactions in the future and drive financial inclusion through access to assets, leveraging Mastercard’s technology and capabilities to support MTN’s ambition to become Africa’s largest fintech platform for both merchants and consumers.

The agreement will impact 13 markets in Africa, including Benin, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Eswatini, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Congo, Guinea, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia, says MTN Fintech Group CEO Serigne Dioum.

This follows Mastercard and MTN’s agreement in February for a minority investment into MTN’s digital financial services arm MTN Fintech.

While Africa is home to over 1.3-billion people, only about 43% are banked with over 90% of all payments and transactions made through cash. Of the total population, 45% have MoMo accounts, says Mastercard Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa market development executive VP Amnah Ajmal.

Meanwhile, MTN’s enhanced partnership with information and communications technology group Ericsson will see it modernise its core network and advance its digital transformation aims.

MTN appointed Ericsson as the sole core strategic supplier for a five-year core network modernisation partnership, with Ericsson set to modernise the core networks of MTN South Africa and MTN Nigeria to ensure the readiness of both network infrastructures to enable fifth-generation (5G) standalone in the future.

The modernised core networks will be powered by Ericsson’s cloud-native dual-mode 5G Core.

“The partnership will enable MTN SA to modernise further and upgrade the core mobile network in line with MTN Group Unified Cloud Acceleration (MUNA) principles and objectives which will ensure the readiness of our network infrastructure to support the strong data growth and enable 5G standalone in the future,” says MTN South Africa chief technology officer Rami Farah.

The MUNA principles and objectives are pivotal to MTN’s Pace technology strategy to accelerate the execution of MTN’s Ambition 2025 by transforming MTN’s network infrastructure into a modern, agile and cloud-native core network.

Meanwhile, the partners also announced that they extended their Business Support Systems (BSS) ecosystem modernisation agreement for the next five years to boost digital transformation in Africa.

Under the renewed agreement, MTN will continue using Ericsson Charging and Ericsson Mediation, integrated with Ericsson Dynamic Activation from the Ericsson Network Management portfolio, as part of the overall BSS landscape.

This will enable best-in-class features and capabilities that support exploring monetisation streams and new business models, such as 5G and Internet of Things (IoT).

The recent agreement with Ericsson marks a significant milestone, enabling MTN to tap into the transformative power of cloud computing, advance its cloud-native transformation, foster continued growth and align with the accelerated implementation of MTN Group’s Ambition 2025 strategy, says MTN Group chief technology and information officer Mazen Mroue.

“With the ongoing support from Ericsson, MTN will have a robust base from which to grow and scale its services across Africa, capturing and securing revenue streams, enhancing billing accuracy and granularity, supporting new services, delivering revenue assurance and enabling data monetisation through preparation for analytics and IoT.”

Ericsson’s Business and Operations Support Systems portfolio is designed to provide the flexibility and agility communication service providers need to respond to changing customer demands, explains Ericsson Middle East and Africa VP and head of global customer unit MTN Hossam Kandeel.

“Ericsson’s agile, flexible, robust and resilient Business and Operations Support Systems and Network Management portfolios uniquely position MTN Group to unlock new revenue streams and capitalise on emerging opportunities in both consumer and enterprise markets.”