MTN Nigeria agents are to distribute mobile money services alongside selling airtime to subscribers on the nation’s largest mobile phone company.

This followed a licence granted by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to Yello Digital Financial Services Limited (YDFS), a subsidiary of MTN Nigeria, Ferdi Moolman, MTN Nigeria CEO says.

Nigeria is home to 174,024,116 live phone connections (91.17%); 122,292,079 Internet users and 63,593,329 broadband users (33.31%) at mid-2019, according to the telecoms industry regulator’s figures.

MTN Nigeria announced that by mid-year, the telecoms company recorded 61.5 million phone customers and 20.7 million data subscribers to account for market’s top position by subscriber numbers.

Meanwhile, the MTN Nigeria CEO says the Super Agent Licence issued by CBN will allow the mobile phone company’s subsidiary offer financial services across the country, a development that deepens the number one telecoms player’s foray into the local FinTech space.

The CBN licensing is also also cheery news for MTN Nigeria agents across the country as the mobile network will now “convert their existing airtime agents and recruit other small businesses to distribute financial services.”

According to Moolman, “YDFS received approval in principle for its Super-Agent Licence in December 2018 and has been conducting a pilot project since then to meet the conditions of a full licence. The successful pilot has now led to the granting of a full licence under which YDFS will distribute financial services to all Nigerians.”

MTN Nigeria plans to leverage its agent network and infrastructure across the country to move from the market leader in the telecoms space into the top player in the FinTech space.

“We are pleased with obtaining a super-agent licence from the Central Bank of Nigeria, which will enable us to build an agent network and accelerate the growth of our fintech business”, Moolman says while announcing the mid-year result ending June this year.

According to him, “In the first half of 2019, we sustained a solid performance, delivering double-digit growth in service revenue, underpinned by growth in voice and data revenue. We added 3.3 million customers to our network, increasing our subscriber base to 61.5 million. Pleasingly, we saw data subscribers increase in the period by 2.1 million to 20.7 million.”