On Nigeria's bustling streets, the signs of Nigeria’s fintech boom are everywhere. Small kiosks and agents offer instant cash withdrawals, money transfers, and bill payments through sleek apps like OPay and Moniepoint. But conspicuously absent is widespread enthusiasm for the mobile money services offered by the country’s telecom giants, MTN Nigeria and Airtel Africa.
Despite massive customer bases and deep pockets, telco-led mobile money has failed to gain a strong foothold in Africa’s most populous nation and one of its top economies. Instead, the telecom operators are relying on a booming airtime lending business to prop up their reported fintech revenues, masking the sluggish performance of their core payment services.
In 2022, MTN Nigeria reported NGN 84.4 B (~USD 199 M at the time) in fintech revenue. A detailed breakdown shows that 92% of this sum came from its XtraTime airtime lending product. Mobile money transactions contributed just 2.9%.
The pattern held through 2025. For the first nine months of the year, MTN’s fintech revenue reached NGN 131.62 B (~USD 91 M). Again, the driver was overwhelmingly airtime advances. Core fintech revenue, which excludes XtraTime, was a far more modest NGN 6.8 B (~USD 4.7 M).
This airtime lending model is a low-risk venture for the telcos. Third-party Value Added Services aggregators, like Creditswitch and Fonyou, provide the technology and assume the credit risk, lending airtime to subscribers who can then make calls or use data. The telecom companies collect a fee, typically 15%, without facing customer defaults.
Industry players say the market is vast. Olumuyiwa Olowogboyega, an industry analyst, notably cited executives recently, claiming one VAS aggregator can disburse up to NGN 200 M in airtime loans daily, translating to a potential annual market of NGN 73 B per vendor.
“It’s a high-risk, high-reward business,” one VAS executive told him. “Most people repay within 90 days.”
This lucrative business, however, overshadows the stagnant growth of the telcos’ mobile money offerings, which was the original promise of their fintech ambitions.
