MobileMoney Fintech Ltd CEO Shaibu Haruna said the company's separation from MTN Ghana on 31 March enables it to expand into credit, savings, and investment products that the previous telecom-embedded structure could not support, he told Joy Business on 13 April.
The specific product roadmap includes three layers. Digital lending under a responsible borrowing framework. Group savings schemes. And access to stocks listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange — a step that would turn MoMo into a retail investment channel for a user base of 19.3 million active accounts.
Haruna said the separation allows MMFL to drive innovation at scale and to move Ghana away from being a prepaid economy to a credit economy.
The company handled GH¢4.1 trillion in transaction value in 2025, up 53.8% year on year, with GH¢38.4 billion sitting in mobile wallets.
What independence changes
The structural separation was driven by Ghana's Payment Systems and Services Act, which requires electronic money issuers to operate independently from telecom operators. MMFL spent nearly five years in regulatory engagement with the Bank of Ghana, the Ghana Stock Exchange, and the Securities and Exchange Commission to complete the process.
The ownership split — 70 percent MTN Dutch Holdings, 30 percent MTN Ghana Fintech Trust — satisfies the local ownership requirement and positions the company for a Ghana Stock Exchange listing within three to five years.
What changes for MMFL is operational freedom. The company can now pursue financial product licences, form partnerships with fund managers and insurers, and build credit infrastructure without running through MTN Ghana's telecoms governance. What does not change is the consumer experience: the MoMo brand, app, and USSD channels remain the same.
The competitive question
MoMo already provides GSE access through a third-party integration with IC Securities, available under Trade Live in the app’s Invest section. Most of the advanced financial services will continue to be achieved through partnerships — regulations restrict some forms of direct ownership, and the ecosystem play is the smarter path in a market where chasing every licence is an added headache. But the separation is what makes MMFL freer to act as a fintech directly rather than a fintech-adjacent entity inside a telco or a fintech-enabler. The distinction matters: third-party integrations route users to a partner’s infrastructure and revenue model. Natively built products sit on MMFL’s own stack, generate first-party data, and feed the IPO valuation story directly.
The credit products are more crowded. Digital lending in Ghana is served by Fido, MTN's existing MoMo Advance, Quikloan, AhomkaLoan, etc, and bank-led mobile loan products. MMFL's advantage is data — 19.3 million users generating transaction histories that can underwrite credit decisions. The question is whether the new lending products will be originated on MMFL's own balance sheet, intermediated through a bank partner, or structured as a marketplace.
Haruna has also prioritised with a 90-day establishment timeline. Building trust infrastructure alongside credit expansion is the right sequence. The products need the rails to be secure before they scale.
Editor’s note (13 April): An earlier version of this article stated that MMFL would be the first mass-market mobile money platform in Ghana to offer direct securities access. GSE access already exists via IC Securities under Trade Live in the MoMo app. The article has been corrected to reflect that the strategic shift is from partner-fronted features to natively built financial products.
