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 natively built investment products that move beyond the current third-party integrations.
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 percent 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 ecosystem vs ownership 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 for the product roadmap: 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 strategic direction is toward owning more of the financial services layer where regulation permits, and partnering where it does not.
