MoMo @ 10: MTN Mobile Money Rewards Key Stakeholders and Partners

CEO of MTN Ghana and the award winners

Accra, Ghana, December 14, 2019//-MTN Mobile Money Limited has climaxed its 10th anniversary with key stakeholder and partner awards held yesterday.

A number of institutions and individuals were awarded for their contributions to the evolution of mobile money (MoMo) by extension the country’s digital financial service (DFS) industry.

The winners were presented with plaques and citations to also thank them for their efforts.

Award categories

Pioneering MoMo Partner Banks                                                                         

The Pioneering MoMo Partner Bank awards were won by Fidelity Bank, Ecobank, GT Bank, Access Bank, UBA, UMB, Zenith Bank, and Stanbic Bank.

Emerging banks

Republic Bank and First Atlantic Bank took home the MoMo Emerging bank awards. While MoMo Partner Bank Frontrunner award was won by Fidelity Bank.

MoMo Fintech Pioneer awards

IT Consortium and CoreNet picked the MoMo Fintech Pioneer awards. Also, the Most Innovative and Supportive Fintech Partner went to IT Consortium.

Similarly, AppN Mobile Solutions won the Emerging and Innovative Fintech Partner award.

Additionally, First MoMo Advance and First MoMo Bill Payment, First Momo School Fee, and Most Supportive MoMo Merchant awards were respectively picked by Milife Insurance, MultiChoice’s DStv, Ghana National College, and Star Oil Company.

Individual awards

Gideon Osei Amoako took home the Momo Patron award. While Madam Elly Ohene Adu who used to work at the Bank of Ghana (BoG) won the MoMo Power Broker award.

Dr Settor Amediku, the Head of Payment Systems Department at the BoG picked the MoMo Regulatory Influencer award.

Eli Hini who has been described as the “Godfather of Mobile Money in Ghana” was recognized for his yeoman role in spearheading the growth of MoMo in the country.

Mr Hini who is also the General Manager of MTN Mobile Money was adjudged as the MoMo Trailblazer.

While MTN’s Vice President of the expanded Southern & East Africa and Ghana (SEAGHA), Ebenezer Twum Asante was awarded the MoMo Game-changer Award.

Mr Asante who was the CEO of MTN Ghana got promoted to become the Vice President of SEAGHA

Bruno Akpaka won the Chief MoMo Master Minder award. A Deputy Minister of Communications, George Andah won the MoMo Brand Builder award.

Tracing the MoMo journey

General Manager of MTN Mobile Money, Eli Hini, said: “The Mobile Money service (MoMo) as we now call it, began when MTN, ventured into this area of using the mobile phone as a tool to undertake financial transactions”.

After discussions with critical stakeholders, we launched Mobile Money service in 2009 under the leadership of MTN Ghana’s CEO, Brett Goschen.  Tarek Itani, an MTN staff is credited with making the first transaction on 25th Sept, 2008 at 3:51pm. We officially launched the service on July 21st 2009”.

Shortly afterwards, they hit the ground running with the catchy ‘Minsa aka” advert.  The advert garnered a lot of “fans” as they say it but unfortunately it did not attract the numbers they were looking for, Mr Hini explained.

“We had to come up with all kinds of ideas including regional relaunches to make it work to justify the continuous investments. Once we got over the bump of lack of familiarity, we made a lot of progress and today here we are”.

Achievements

In his words: “From less than 100,000 subscribers after six months of launch, our registered subscriber numbers have reached the 14 million milestone over this 10-year period.  We started with nine partner banks and now we have 18 partner banks, with the 19th on the way”.

Mr Hini 

With the increase in numbers came the change in technology partners. From Fundamo we “ported” to Ericsson seamlessly in Oct 2015 and got our ISO accreditation in the first quarter of 2016, the first in the industry”.

A decade down the line, according to Mr Hini MoMo has become the foremost financial Services platform in the country. “We are proud of this achievement”, he stated.

Today, there are about six major categories of financial transactions on the MoMo platform under which there are other sub – services.

“On MoMo today, we are not just sending and receiving money or paying bills, MoMo is now used for Saving, Investing, Payments, Shopping, Insurance and Loan acquisition”.

We did not only build local partnerships, we also forged partnerships with International giants like Google, Western Union, World Remit and International agencies such as World Food Programme, UNHCR, GSMA, among others, he noted.

“As at the end of November this year, we had over 140,000 active Mobile Money agents. We also have over 5000 mobile agents/canvassers. Some of these agents and canvassers, prior to the introduction of MoMo had no meaningful employments”.

MTN MoMo has partnered several organizations to rollout key social empowerment projects over the decade including helping digitize the Agriculture Value Chain through mAgric, POS in partnership with several banks and scaling up female participation within the MoMo merchant space.

Commendations

Mr Hini used the occasion to commend the leadership of MTN, staff, and distributors who worked tirelessly to get this service accepted.

“It took many sleepless nights, staff braining storming sessions and a lot of hardwork and collaboration from all our partners for us to succeed. We are extremely grateful to everyone who contributed”.

Selorm Adadevoh, CEO MTN GHANA

The Chief Executive Officer of MTN Ghana, Selorm Adadevoh was excited by the achievements made by the MoMo subsidiary of the MTN Ghana family.

“As a technology company, we are excited by the achievements of MoMo”.

African Eye Report

 

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