MTN Group
Africa's largest mobile operator engineering fintech ecosystems where network effects create exponential lock-in.
MTN Group crossed 300 million subscribers in Q3 2025—a milestone that understates the biological transformation underway. The company isn't just selling SIM cards; it's engineering mutualistic ecosystems where mobile connectivity and financial services reinforce each other. Mobile Money (MoMo) now serves 64.3 million active users processing $212.2 billion in annual transaction value. Each subscriber becomes a node in two networks simultaneously: telecommunications and payments.
This dual-network strategy creates compounding switching costs. A Nigerian customer using MTN for voice/data and MoMo for payments faces exponential friction to switch carriers—losing not just phone number portability but also payment history, saved beneficiaries, merchant relationships, credit scores. In H1 2025, MTN's service revenue surged 23.2% to R105.1 billion with EBITDA up 60.6% (margin expanding to 42.7%). Nigeria alone grew service revenue 67.4% in Q3—demonstrating how inflation, currency devaluation, and network density create pricing power.
The fintech architecture reveals ecosystem engineering at scale. MoMo advanced services (remittances, credit, insurance, merchant payments) grew 42% in H1 2025, now representing 33.4% of total MoMo revenue—up 3.8 percentage points year-over-year. This is trophic succession: basic payment infrastructure (send/receive money) establishes the foundation, then higher-margin services colonize the platform. Mastercard's minority investment into MTN's Fintech structure validates the model: payments infrastructure becomes more valuable as transaction volume scales.
The expansion strategy follows mycelial logic: grow where nutrients are abundant and competition is weak. Ethiopia added 63.6% more customers to reach 7.1 million—a greenfield market where MTN established first-mover advantage. West and Central Africa (WECA) service revenue grew 17%, with Ghana and Cameroon driving growth. This is apical meristem expansion: concentrate growth at specific tips rather than diffusing resources everywhere. MTN's biological insight: in emerging markets, telecom and fintech aren't separate industries—they're mutualistic partners that should be grown together.