MTN South Africa made its vaunted return into the country’s mobile money sector, a move CEO Godfrey Motsa hailed as offering great opportunities and societal benefits.

Consumer availability of its MoMo product comes more than three years after the operator abandoned its original effort due to a lack of commercial viability.

Meeting a timeline announced in December 2019, the operator switched-on the service today (30 January). It offers cash transfer and retail payments through either an app or SMS on basic devices.

MoMo was developed in partnership with financial services company uBank.

At its launch event, Motsa said the product brought great opportunities to the market, citing the successes reported by other operations within MTN Group with similar mobile money services.

“We want to compliment the current banking system. In so doing, we help job creation and we also diversify the MTN portfolio.”

MTN Group has long coveted a return to the sector in its home market: in 2018 CEO Rob Shuter stated the company was working on a return to financial services in the country, and also make a number of statements on his ambitious goals in the sector.