From processing 18 loans per second to partnering with Ant International, MTN Group Fintech CEO Serigne Dioum tells TechCabal's Phathisani Moyo—in this edition of Coffee With…—how he plans to convert MTN's 317 million telecom subscribers into a single, closed-loop financial ecosystem.

Serigne Dioum, now Chief Executive Officer of MTN Group Fintech, began his career in mobile payments in 2007. At the time, the premise was straightforward: give people a reliable way to transfer money using a mobile phone. It was the same year Safaricom's M-Pesa launched in Kenya, the service that would go on to define mobile money globally and prove that telecom operators could build financial services at scale.

Nearly two decades later, he is trying to build something far bigger.

The Senegalese executive oversees MTN Group Fintech, the entity behind MoMo, the telco's digital financial services platform and one of the largest mobile money operations in Africa by user base. His vision is to convert the telecom giant's massive subscriber base into one of Africa's largest integrated digital and financial ecosystems.

Achieving that requires driving engagement beyond basic peer-to-peer transfers. Dioum wants users paying merchants, borrowing, saving, receiving cross-border remittances, purchasing daily services, and ultimately managing their digital lives entirely through MoMo.

The scale of the opportunity is immense. While MTN boasts over 317 million subscribers across its broader telecom operations, MoMo currently counts over 70 million monthly active users across 14 markets.

The strategic imperative for Dioum is bridging that gap by converting telecom subscribers into active financial services users. It is a pattern seen across the industry: as voice and data revenue growth has matured, African telecom operators have increasingly looked to fintech as their next growth engine.

On Tuesday, TechCabal sat down with Dioum on the sidelines of the MTN Group Fintech Summit 2026 in Johannesburg—a gathering of regulators, commercial banks, tech providers, and fintech founders debating the continent's financial future.

For Dioum, two flagship markets anchor this growth strategy: Nigeria and South Africa.

"If you look at our portfolio of companies within MTN, our two largest markets are Nigeria and South Africa," he told TechCabal. "If you exclude those two markets, MoMo penetration is very high."

Consequently, the growth mandate is less about hunting for entirely new subscribers and more about deepening MoMo's utility for MTN's existing customer base.

The journey to fintech

Dioum's path to leading one of Africa's largest fintech operations began in Senegal. At 18, he moved to France to study telecommunications engineering before launching his career at a tech consulting firm. He later returned to West Africa to join Orange Senegal.

His entry into telecommunications was inspired by a personal mentor: Cheikh Tidiane Mbaye, the former CEO of Orange Senegal. Dioum admired Mbaye's executive leadership and sought to emulate his career trajectory. "I wanted to do the same," he recalled.

But the industry he entered was changing.

As legacy fixed-line infrastructure gave way to the mobile revolution, Dioum bypassed traditional network engineering to focus on value-added services built on top of mobile connectivity.

"I was never someone who was doing traditional telecommunications," he noted. That mindset steered him directly into the nascent mobile payments space in 2007.

He joined MTN in 2013 and assumed the role of CEO of MTN Group Fintech in January 2023, taking charge of an enterprise that had evolved far beyond basic peer-to-peer money transfers.

In the first half of 2026, MTN Group Fintech processed more than 13 billion transactions worth over $330 billion. It also had more than 2.3 million merchants and one million agents, while international remittances exceeded $3 billion.

The numbers show the size of the platform. Dioum's job now is to deepen what customers do on it.

Nigeria and South Africa

Nigeria represents one of the highest-leverage growth opportunities in Dioum's portfolio. It is also Africa's most populous country, where a large share of adults remain outside the formal banking system despite rapid growth in digital payments.

To capture it, MTN upgraded its MoMo technology stack and restructured local leadership, appointing Bode Abifarin as Managing Director and CEO of MoMo Payment Service Bank (PSB) in Nigeria.

Abifarin, who formally assumed office on September 1, 2026, is tasked with broadening the platform's regulatory licences and forging tighter operational alignment between MTN's telecom and fintech divisions. The PSB licence under which MoMo operates in Nigeria is a regulatory category created by the Central Bank of Nigeria to widen financial access through telecom-led banking alternatives.

"We think we have all the ingredients to be successful in Nigeria," Dioum affirmed.

South Africa presents a starkly different structural environment.

As MTN's home market, it boasts high banking penetration and sophisticated financial infrastructure, yet physical cash remains stubborn in daily commerce—and MoMo has struggled to match its sub-Saharan market penetration.

Dioum sees that as an opportunity rather than a dead end.

South Africa's national payments infrastructure is changing, creating room for new players and new forms of competition. MTN wants to use that infrastructure to reach both consumers and merchants. "We see this infrastructure unlocking opportunities for us," he said.

Lending is another part of the opportunity.

The South African market has a large pool of consumers and smaller merchants that remain underserved, Dioum said, and MTN sees room to provide financing to those segments.

For a company with an existing relationship with millions of customers, the advantage is that it can potentially use transaction data and its digital platform to serve people who may not fit neatly into traditional banking models.

18 loans every second

Microlending offers the clearest proof of MoMo's evolution beyond payments. MTN currently originates approximately 18 loans per second, with an average ticket size of $20. Yet Dioum maintains these figures scratch only the surface of regional demand.

"When you look at lending overall in Africa and in our markets, we think 90% of lending potential or demand is still unaddressed," he said. MoMo currently focuses largely on consumer lending, but Dioum wants to move towards larger-ticket loans.

The rationale is strictly strategic. "Lending is part of the value chain that we want to own," he asserted. However, owning credit rails does not imply pursuing full commercial banking charters across every jurisdiction.

MTN's regulatory playbook remains localised: in some markets, existing Electronic Money Institution (EMI) frameworks suffice; in others, the firm is securing microfinance or specialised credit licences. The ultimate goal is expanding financial inclusion without subjecting users to traditional banking friction.

Dioum describes the journey as moving from access to participation. A customer can start by putting money into a wallet, then save, access working capital, borrow, and use those financial services to grow a business.

"You start with affordable access to financial services," he told TechCabal. "You start saving, then you can access working capital, and after that we can help you grow your business further."

Why Ant International matters

The next phase of that strategy involves making MoMo more than a financial wallet.

MTN has partnered with Ant International, the payments and digital technology affiliate spun off from China's Alibaba Group, whose technology stack supports a super-app model where partners can build mini-applications and services on top of the platform. For Dioum, the attraction is not simply better technology. It is the ability to connect MTN's customers to a much wider network of businesses and services.

"Ant International has a platform that is used by more than two billion people across the world. We think bringing that capability will help us improve how our partners get access to our customers, and allow us to link customers and partners and be in the middle of that ecosystem," he stated.

MTN already has an open application programming interface (API) that allows businesses to integrate with MoMo and offer services through the platform. It has also moved beyond payments into areas such as marketplaces, where businesses can sell goods digitally.

The ambition is to make MoMo the place where customers do more than move money.

Payment is the last step

Projecting MoMo's trajectory five years out, Dioum envisions more than a scaled-up mobile wallet—he sees a comprehensive digital financial home.

Subscribers should be able to make merchant payments, initiate transfers, access credit, receive international remittances, and consume everyday digital services within a single closed-loop environment.

"If you hold funds in your wallet, you shouldn't need to cash out to transact," he emphasised. "You should be able to manage your entire financial life digitally."

Smartphone adoption is accelerating this transition, allowing MTN to systematically migrate users from legacy feature-phone USSD channels to the feature-rich MoMo app.

Then came perhaps the clearest explanation of what MTN Fintech is trying to become. "In the end, payment is not necessarily the first step. Payment is the last step," he explained to TechCabal. The idea is to build enough of an ecosystem around the customer that payment becomes the natural final action rather than the entire product.

By surrounding the user with daily utility, payment becomes the seamless byproduct of an underlying digital lifestyle rather than a standalone task.

A different relationship with regulators

Building that ecosystem across the 14 African countries where MoMo operates presents another challenge: regulation. MTN's fintech operations have been structurally separated from its connectivity businesses in several markets, giving them dedicated management and, where required, financial-services licences.

Dioum also wants regulators involved in the process of building new products.

That was one of the reasons for this week's fintech summit in Johannesburg, which brought regulators together with companies building Africa's digital financial infrastructure. Lesetja Kganyago, South African Reserve Bank Governor, was the keynote speaker.

Dioum does not see policymakers simply as gatekeepers. "We see regulators as partners," he said. Many of the regulators across MTN's markets have financial-inclusion targets of their own. MTN, meanwhile, has customers, infrastructure, and a distribution network that can help reach them.

But new products bring new risks. Regulatory sandboxes, Dioum said, can provide a way to test services in a controlled environment before broader rules are developed. That relationship will matter as MTN moves into areas such as lending and digital services that sit further beyond traditional mobile money.

From access to participation

Dioum has spent much of his career watching telecommunications and financial services converge.

He started by helping build services around mobile networks.

Now he is trying to make those services central to how millions of Africans manage their financial lives.

The numbers suggest he has a substantial foundation: more than 70 million monthly active MoMo users, billions of transactions, and millions of merchants and agents. But the bigger prize is the 317 million MTN customer base that has not yet become an active fintech user.

Nigeria and South Africa may determine how successfully the company can close that gap. And the answer may depend on whether MoMo can become something more useful than a place to send money.

For Dioum, the future is a platform where customers can keep money, use it, borrow it, send it across borders, and spend it on the things they need, without having to leave the ecosystem.

That is a long way from the mobile payments business he entered in 2007. But it also explains the trajectory of Dioum's career: from building services around mobile networks to using those networks as a gateway into financial services.

Nearly two decades later, his challenge is no longer simply getting people to move money on their phones. It is convincing MTN's 317 million subscribers that they can do much more with the relationship they already have with the telecom group.

For Dioum, MoMo's future depends on making that transition—from a service people use when they need to make a payment to a platform they return to because it helps them manage their financial lives.

The ambition is clear. Now MTN has to make MoMo useful enough for 317 million subscribers to see it that way.

Source: TechCabal