MTN South Africa has officially launched MoMo Pay, a digital payment platform designed to help individuals and small businesses—especially in the informal sector—accept cashless payments quickly and affordably.
Designed for simplicity and accessibility, MoMo Pay is MTN’s answer to the long-standing dominance of cash in the country’s informal economy, which accounts for over 95% of transactions in that sector.
With MoMo Pay, merchants can accept instant payments via QR codes, merchant IDs, or payment requests—all at a transaction fee of just 0.5%, significantly undercutting existing service providers. In a market where informal traders are often excluded from digital financial services due to cost and complexity, MTN’s new offering promises to unlock wide-reaching economic opportunities.
Turning a Gap into Growth
The informal economy in South Africa is teeming with entrepreneurial energy but lacks the digital tools to scale. Most small business owners remain reliant on cash, which leaves them vulnerable to theft, inhibits access to credit, and limits their ability to participate in the formal economy.
MTN is positioning MoMo Pay as a tool of economic inclusion. “We are not just digitising payments,” said Kagiso Mothibi, CEO of Fintech at MTN South Africa, “we are unblocking a pathway to financial dignity and scalable opportunity.”
That pathway begins with simplicity. There are no registration fees, no paperwork, and no complicated onboarding processes. All a merchant needs is a smartphone and a willingness to grow. MTN’s merchant acquisition teams work on the ground to train new users, making MoMo Pay accessible to traders in townships, rural communities, and busy urban markets.
Competition and MTN’s Advantage
MTN’s move into the digital payments space pits it against a well-established group of competitors, including banks, fintech startups like Yoco and iKhokha, and even global tech players entering the financial services landscape. But MTN believes its existing mobile infrastructure and a growing base of over 13 million registered MoMo users in South Africa give it a competitive edge.
Where others charge higher fees or require bank-level onboarding, MTN’s model is designed to work for the corner shop owner, the roadside vendor, and the informal service provider. “Just a smartphone and a vision to grow,” as Mothibi puts it, is the entry point.
Beyond Payments: Building a Financial Ecosystem
While MoMo Pay starts with digital transactions, MTN has a broader vision. The company aims to develop the platform into a full-spectrum financial ecosystem, offering microloans, savings products, insurance, and other services typically inaccessible to informal merchants.
“MoMo Pay is laying the foundation,” said Mothibi. “We see MoMo merchants not just as sellers, but as community hubs—trusted touchpoints where financial inclusion can begin.”
The platform already enables users to sell prepaid services like electricity, airtime, data, and transport tickets, earning a commission with every transaction. It also supports payments for services like DStv subscriptions, giving merchants multiple revenue channels.
Scaling for Impact
Over the next three to five years, MTN intends to onboard hundreds of thousands of merchants, essentially digitising a large swathe of the informal sector. The strategy is focused on not just growth but meaningful transformation—helping traders move from cash-only to credit-worthy, from isolated to connected.
In a country where traditional financial services often fail to reach the grassroots, MoMo Pay could be a turning point. It represents MTN’s effort to turn technological infrastructure into inclusive economic impact.
“Real inclusion starts at the street level,” said Mothibi. “With MoMo Pay, we’re building the rails for digital prosperity—one merchant at a time.”
