The company said service revenue rose nearly 25% to R218 billion ($13 billion) for the year ended December 31, 2025. Management linked the growth largely to strong performance in its key West African markets, especially MTN Nigeria and MTN Ghana.

The result statement also confirmed that 2025 was the final year of the company’s Ambition 2025 strategy, which focused on expanding data services and digital financial platforms across its markets.

Across the group’s 16 operating countries, the total customer base rose to more than 307 million by the end of the year. Out of that figure, about 172 million were active data users, while about 70 million used mobile money services.

MTN said it invested about R38 billion during the year to strengthen its network and digital platforms. The investment expanded coverage and boosted capacity as demand for data continued to grow.

Data traffic on the network increased by 27%. At the same time, average monthly data usage climbed to 12.5GB per user, up from 10.8GB previously.

The group’s financial technology arm also expanded, with mobile money transactions rising by 15% to more than 23 billion transactions during the year. The total value of those payments exceeded 500 billion dollars.

Profitability also improved significantly, as earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation reached R98.5 billion, representing growth of more than one-third in constant currency. The company said cost savings of R3.6 billion helped support that result.

The board declared a dividend of 500 cents per share for the year, a 45% increase from the 345 cents paid in 2024. The payout exceeded the company’s earlier guidance of at least 370 cents.

Group Chief Executive Ralph Mupita said the company will introduce a new shareholder remuneration structure aimed at distributing between 40% and 60% of equity-free cash flow.

The plan includes a share buyback programme of up to R6 billion, which the company said will be carried out gradually from 2026.

Nigeria drives earnings growth

MTN Nigeria swung back to profit after tax of ₦1.1 trillion in 2025, recovering from a ₦400.4 billion loss the previous year when currency depreciation triggered heavy foreign exchange losses, affecting revenue.

In the final quarter of the year alone, pre-tax profit rose to ₦569.6 billion. That was a 248.8% increase compared with ₦163.3 billion recorded in the same period in 2024.

At the group level, the Nigerian subsidiary also overtook MTN South Africa as the largest profit contributor.

Operating earnings in Nigeria more than doubled to about 1.93 billion dollars, far ahead of South Africa’s roughly 1.05 billion dollars. MTN Ghana also posted strong revenue growth, with operating earnings rising to about 1.28 billion dollars.

Together, the expansion in Nigeria and Ghana pushed West Africa to the centre of the company’s profit structure.

Growth supported by scale

Nigeria’s performance shows the size of the country’s telecom market and the growing demand for data and digital payments.

With a population of more than 200 million people and high smartphone use, the market generates large volumes of traffic and digital transactions.

However, the Nigerian operation is very expensive to run. Telecom towers rely heavily on diesel generators because electricity supply is unreliable, and additional security is required for many base stations.

As a result, network operating costs in Nigeria are significantly higher than in South Africa.

Even so, the scale of the market has allowed profits to expand faster than operating costs. Direct network costs rose only slightly during the year, while earnings more than doubled.

Investor confidence returns

Shares of MTN Group have increased nearly 80% over the past year, pushing the company’s market value to about 381 billion rand, or roughly 23.7 billion dollars.

With Nigeria now accounting for a growing share of profits, the country is expected to support the group’s future investment decisions, particularly in network expansion, data services and mobile financial technology.

With that scale, we definitely can’t limit the app’s description to a tool just for messaging. For many MSMEs across Africa, WhatsApp is their business platform, the hub for sales, customer service, operations, and payments.

Across large parts of the continent, small businesses don’t run on standalone websites or dedicated point-of-sale systems. They conduct nearly all of their commerce via chat. 

The very ubiquity that makes WhatsApp powerful also creates a subtle but persistent drag on growth. 

This article focuses on how African SMEs use WhatsApp, explores the advantages it brings, examines the limitations it imposes, and argues why we must build infrastructure on top of it, before these enterprises outgrow their conversational foundation.

WhatsApp Business vs Telegram Channels: Competing for SME Communication

Two facts make WhatsApp essential to Africa’s MSME economy. First, WhatsApp’s global reach is enormous, over 3 billion people use it every month, according to Meta’s 2025 report.

Second, mobile technology is a cornerstone of Africa’s economy. According to the GSMA, in 2024, mobile technologies and services accounted for 7.7% of Africa’s GDP, driven by growing smartphone adoption and expanding mobile internet access. 

When mobile is the primary economic gateway, top messaging apps naturally become the infrastructure for business.

Together, these trends mean that WhatsApp sits at the intersection of accessibility and scale, a near-universal app accessed via the phone, the tool of choice for entrepreneurs with limited capital and moderate technical capacity.

How SMEs Use WhatsApp: Business Workflows in Chat

For many African SMEs, WhatsApp is their default workspace. Here’s how:

• Sales and discovery: Merchants use WhatsApp catalogues, broadcast lists and group chats as their storefronts. Buyers browse images and voice notes, ask questions, and place orders, all within the same chat.
• Customer service: Returns, complaints, confirmations, everything happens via chat. Because responses are usually fast and personal, buyers trust the exchange more than a faceless email or website form.
• Payments and invoicing: Sellers coordinate payments via mobile money, bank transfers or USSD. Customers share payment confirmations in chat. Some businesses then issue invoices as photos or PDFs inside WhatsApp itself.
• Operations and logistics: Orders are coordinated through group chats with delivery drivers or warehouse staff. Drivers get drop-off locations, customer photos, and verbal instructions, all in real time.
• Team coordination: Small teams manage tasks, schedules and recruitment through voice notes and chat groups, minimising friction in low-infrastructure environments.

These workflows mean that for many micro-entrepreneurs, moving off WhatsApp would slow them down and weaken the personal, trusted communication that underpins their sales.

The Upside: Why WhatsApp Triggers Growth

The benefits that come with this arrangement are real and substantial:

• Reduced entry cost: It is free to create a catalogue and share it. No need for a website or expensive digital tools.
• Trust-building: Real-time chat, voice messages and pictures create direct, human engagement. Buyers feel more secure.
• High engagement: Chat messages beat traditional outreach: responses are faster, and conversion rates are higher.
• Financial inclusion: Entrepreneurs who lack formal infrastructure can still transact, document orders and build a client base.
• Scalability: For many African SMEs, WhatsApp provides a way to scale activity without investing heavily in physical or digital infrastructure up front.

The Digital Ceiling: Limits to Scale

Despite the strengths, WhatsApp’s consumer-app roots embed limitations that become more obvious as businesses try to grow.

1. Account and device friction
   A WhatsApp account is typically tied to a single phone number and device, making collaboration difficult. Shared inboxes are awkward, unless businesses adopt the Business API, which comes with onboarding costs.
2. Absence of native data analytics
   Conversations in chat are unstructured. There is no built-in way to run analytics on customer behaviour, funnel performance or churn, unless external tools are used.
3. Limited integration with business systems
   There is no native link between WhatsApp and inventory management, accounting or fulfilment systems. Many firms must reconcile chat-based orders manually.
4. Payment reconciliation challenges
   Payments come through diverse channels, mobile money, bank transfers, USSD. Sellers rely on customers to share confirmation screenshots in chat, then manually reconcile records.
5. Platform risk
   Companies using WhatsApp face real vulnerability from outages or policy changes. The six-hour Facebook/WhatsApp outage in October 2021, and more recent API policy changes, show how a private platform can become a systemic risk.
6. Regulatory and formalisation gaps
   Transactions in chat are opaque to regulators, tax authorities and lenders. Without structured receipts or formal records, many businesses remain informal and credit-invisible.

These challenges add friction, cost and risk, particularly for businesses that want to scale beyond a single phone or a small customer base.

The Layer-2 Ecosystem: Building on What Exists

Recognising these limits, a growing ecosystem is building on top of WhatsApp. Providers include:

• Business Solution Providers (BSPs) that connect WhatsApp Business API to CRMs and customer-service dashboards.
• Chat-commerce platforms that standardise order intake and use templates to turn chat into structured data.
• Reconciliation tools that match payment confirmations to orders, reducing manual labour.
• Voice-to-text or voice-to-structure tools that convert voice notes into itemised orders.

These companies leverage WhatsApp’s reach while adding the structure, analytics and automation SMEs need to scale. But access is uneven: expenses, regional availability and ease-of-use vary, and many small merchants are still excluded.

Macro Risks and Policy Implications

The WhatsApp-first model of commerce presents bigger economic issues:

• Systemic concentration: When trade sits on a single privately-owned messaging platform, any disruption (technical or policy) carries significant economic risk.
• Tax and credit invisibility: Governments lose visibility into business transactions, making effective taxation and credit provision difficult.
• Lack of open data standards: Without a standard for business metadata inside chat (orders, receipts, invoices), each provider builds its own silo.
• Consumer protection: Disputes in private chat are hard to adjudicate. Regulators need clearer safeguards for transactions that begin and end in WhatsApp.
• Digital sovereignty: African economies must balance the benefits of low-cost communication infrastructure with the risk of over-dependence on a platform owned by a global company.

To address these risks, policymakers should incentivise interoperable messaging standards, support layer-2 tools for reconciliation and analytics, and promote subsidised digital infrastructure for SMEs.

A Founders’ and Investors’ Playbook

For entrepreneurs:

• Use structured order-forms or templates within chat.
• Invest in a Business API integration early if you anticipate growth.
• Automate payment reconciliation: match client screenshots with invoices or orders.
• Maintain fallback channels (SMS, email, USSD) to mitigate against outages.
• Record structured data from day one, it supports credit, compliance and scale.

For investors:

• Invest in SaaS firms building shared inboxes, CRMs or reconciliation tools for chat-based businesses.
• Prioritise companies that enable multi-user chat accounts or group-based order management.
• Look for voice-commerce technology: voice-to-text or structured templates that work in low-literacy markets.
• Support developers working on open messaging standards or APIs for business metadata.

WhatsApp has gone beyond being just messaging for African SMEs; it’s the bedrock of commerce for millions. It gives speed, trust, low cost, and inclusion. 

But it was not built for enterprise scale. Many businesses will hit a ceiling if they rely exclusively on conversational workflows.

We now face a choice. Do we treat WhatsApp as the final platform, or as the base layer for a richer infrastructure? 

To turn conversations into scalable economic value, we need to invest in structured data tools, open standards, and lightweight business platforms that build on and elevate what WhatsApp offers. Only then can we fully activate the possibilities of this de facto operating system.

The co-branded service enables customers in Zambia to send and receive money globally, based on their convenience and needs.

Zoona is a leading fintech and enterprise payments platform in Zambia. Acquired by Chipper Cash in 2022, the two brands now support 5 million customers across Africa. 

Today’s announcement combines Western Union’s global strength and 175 years of expertise in international money movement with Chipper Cash’s and Zoona’s deep local payments knowledge and innovative mobile technology platform. 

Chipper Cash app users can now support their loved ones by sending and receiving money seamlessly across Western Union’s network of over 200 countries and territories. 

They also have the flexibility to send funds to mobile wallets worldwide, as well as for cash pick-up at hundreds of thousands of locations abroad. Payout to bank accounts shall be launched shortly.

“Zambia’s digitally savvy population of over 20 million is driving a remarkable shift toward mobile-first financial solutions,” said Mohamed Touhami el Ouazzani, Western Union’s Regional vice president of Africa. 

“Integrating our international money transfer services in the Chipper Cash app means customers can transfer funds across our global network – reliably and with ease. I am delighted then that, together, we are expanding the possibilities for Zambians to connect, transact and thrive in the global economy.”

The Chipper Cash app is available for download on both Android and iOS smartphones. To initiate a Western Union transaction, customers can use funds stored in their Chipper Cash wallet. The wallet can be conveniently topped up at multiple cash and digital payment touchpoints, including retailers, mobile network operators, banks and ATMs.

“At Zoona, we’ve witnessed firsthand the incredible evolution of Zambia’s financial landscape—from the early days of cash-based transactions and agent networks to a thriving ecosystem of mobile and digital payments,” said Brett Magrath, CEO at Zoona and CPO at Chipper Cash. 

“This partnership marks the next chapter in that journey. With smartphone adoption on the rise, there’s an increasing appetite for digital financial services that move beyond USSD to deliver richer, app-based experiences. This partnership extends the reach of Zambia’s vibrant fintech ecosystem—connecting more users to global financial services through a seamless digital experience.”

The collaboration builds on Western Union’s well-established physical presence in Zambia that caters to diverse and fast-evolving customer needs. The move also supports Western Union’s, Zoona’s and Chipper Cash’s shared mission to make financial services accessible to all consumers in Zambia – regardless of their banking status.

The partnership will introduce new microcredit solutions aimed at serving unbanked and underserved populations across the continent.

With over 100 million customers in sixteen countries across Africa and the Middle East, Orange Money Group facilitated more than €160 billion in transactions in 2024. 

JUMO has disbursed over $8 billion to more than 31 million African customers, matching expertise and a desire to scale with Orange Money Group.

This partnership will enable Orange Money Group to advance its financial inclusion strategy by introducing new microcredit services to its customer value proposition. 

The collaboration with JUMO leverages their data analytics and artificial intelligence capabilities, refined over 10 years to optimise credit allocation, reduce the cost of risk for lending to < 4% and grow sustainable portfolios.

This strategic alliance will also enable the rollout of various credit products across multiple markets from a multitude of funders, creating a new microfinance marketplace for the unbanked in emerging markets, with an initial focus on Francophone Africa. 

JUMO’s leading expertise in asset allocation and credit risk management makes it a key partner for Orange Money Group in Africa. Orange Money Group customers will be eligible to securely request credit through their mobile devices, without needing a bank account or collateral.

JUMO has developed a range of short-term and installment loan products for consumers, merchants and distributors with limited access to these services. They use trained AI algorithms to assess credit risk and facilitate the immediate flow of capital through their partnerships with pan-African banks and development finance institutions.

JUMO’s AI-driven technology for banks and payments ecosystems will provide Orange Money Group the opportunity to introduce real-time app-based and USSD lending to their African customers. The offering is multi-country, multi-product, and multi-funding, with plans to launch in Burkina Faso imminent, to be followed by Mali and Botswana.

This partnership delivers a streamlined user experience that combines financial inclusion with cutting-edge technology. The process is as follows:

• Users access the service via their Orange Money Group wallet
• They request an amount of credit
• JUMO’s AI technology evaluates eligibility based on transactional data
• If validated, the amount is immediately credited to the user’s wallet.
• Repayment is made automatically according to agreed terms.

Aminata Kane, CEO of Orange Money Group said: “After developing transfer and payment services used thousands of times every second, we now aim to support our customers in their personal projects, as well as help them manage everyday emergencies. In recent years, Orange Money has expanded its portfolio with highly accessible small loan offers.”

“By partnering with JUMO, we aim to accelerate this momentum, roll out these services across a wide range of countries, and combine our expertise with their technology to deliver support that is even faster, more transparent, and better tailored to the needs of all our customers”.

Andrew Watkins-Ball, JUMO CEO and founder: “We are proud to have been chosen to partner with Orange and we are excited to connect Orange customers with products from the market-leading banks that run on our platform. 

“This collaboration, built on top of Orange Money Group’s mobile payments and money transfer platforms, will provide customers with great financial choices and allows our bank partners to grow in new markets”.

In 2025 alone, the market is already valued at $329 billion, with transaction inefficiencies costing up to $5 billion each year. As someone tracking this space closely, I can say there’s a good promise, but so are the fractures beneath the surface.

At the centre of this growth are two facts, first, mobile money in sub-Saharan Africa handled 30% of all remittances in 2022, worth $16 billion. Second, Africa processed 66% of all global mobile money transactions that same year.

Fintechs have stepped into a market largely abandoned by traditional banks and burdened by high remittance fees, fragmented regulations, and unreliable forex infrastructure.

Formal remittance inflows to Africa hit $90.2 billion in 2023, almost double what the continent received in foreign aid. However, informal flows are still a huge blind spot.

Between 35% and 75% of total remittances go unrecorded, meaning the real market size is likely far larger than official figures reveal. The reliance on informal channels isn’t by choice, it’s driven by survival.

Formal fees average 7.4%, while digital solutions can slash that to between 1.5% and 3%. When fees mean the difference between buying medicine or going without, the decision is simple.

The migration from traditional to digital is happening, but not fast enough. Transaction times remain slow. Banks still dominate high-value payments, with settlement windows stretching from one to five days.

In contrast, blockchain-enabled platforms can finalise transfers within seconds, at a fraction of the cost. Even companies like Wise are delivering same-day transactions, using pooled liquidity to avoid FX markups entirely.

A blockchain transfer could cost under $10, while a $5 million bank transaction might rack up $150,000 in fees and take days to complete.

The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), launched in 2022, was supposed to change that. It enables local currency transactions across borders, cutting the need for dollars or euros.

According to the report, PAPSS could save the continent $5 billion annually. But, its adoption has been slow, hindered by liquidity constraints and regulatory hesitation.

And this is beyond a problem of cost or technology, it’s human. In West Africa, informal traders move billions in goods across borders. Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso alone channelled $1.5 billion in informal remittances.

These traders use whatever means are available, from mobile money to couriers, to settle their accounts. In Southern Africa, migrants working in mines and households in South Africa sent $17 billion back home in 2022.

Zimbabwe received $1.9 billion from South Africa alone. But they paid a steep price, 12% to 15% in transaction fees, often through risky and unregulated routes.

Meanwhile, East Africa leads in mobile money adoption, with 60% of remittances already going digital. Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda benefit from platforms like M-Pesa and MTN MoMo, slashing fees and boosting access.

In Central Africa, however, 70% of transactions are still informal, and financial infrastructure remains scarce. In North Africa, formal banking dominates but faces pressure from crypto-backed options and Middle East-driven remittance flows.

Even as fintechs like Chipper Cash, Flutterwave, and Afriex challenge the incumbents, they’re running into their own set of walls. Regulatory fragmentation, licensing bottlenecks, and lack of interoperability are real threats.

Many African countries still don’t allow full electronic KYC, forcing users to redo verification across platforms. Forex policies in places like Nigeria make it nearly impossible to predict costs. Liquidity shortages force businesses to clear transactions offshore, adding further layers of expense.

Despite these obstacles, digital innovation is saving African families between $4 and $6 billion annually. And the potential is far greater. If mobile money networks across Africa could integrate seamlessly, another $5 billion in savings could be unlocked. Blockchain could cut transaction costs by 99% and bring settlement times down to seconds.

“The most successful companies will efficiently scale, adeptly navigate regulatory frameworks, and provide seamless, affordable transaction services.” Companies in this sector are not limiting themselves to just innovation, but strategy, partnerships, and policy alignment.

Here’s where we stand: the fate of Africa’s cross-border payments is digital, decentralised, and mobile-first. But that future won’t arrive by accident.

It will require regulators to harmonise policies, fintechs to prioritise infrastructure and liquidity, and investors to see past short-term profits into long-term system-wide gains.

In our continent, $200 can mean a life changed, or a future secured, every transaction matters. But we’ve got a long way to go.