Based on its interim results, African fintech lender Optasia is flying. Revenue surged 58% to $185.3m, adjusted ebitda rose 45% to $77.9m and normalised net income climbed 40%. But the bigger question is whether it can retain enough of the lending economics as key distribution partner MTN increasingly seeks to capture more of the value chain.
That dependency is built into Optasia’s model. The airtime credit solutions (ACS) business lets users borrow airtime or data, while the microfinancing solutions (MFS) division covers cash advances, overdrafts and other small-ticket loans. Optasia provides the credit scoring, pricing, risk management and collections engine — but the customer relationship, and therefore the distribution rail, belongs to telecoms operators and mobile money platforms.
How exposed is Optasia to MTN? Investors are not allowed to know. “We do not disclose that, and we cannot disclose that, because that will not be so good for us in terms of the market and the competition,” CEO Salvador Anglada tells the FM. Fair enough, perhaps. But some investors may conclude that being unable to quantify exposure to the company’s most obvious strategic counterparty is not so good for prospective returns either.
Besides, reasonable inferences can be made. Optasia’s four largest markets — Ghana, Uganda, Congo-Brazzaville and Nigeria — generated 67% of first-half revenue. MTN is the leading mobile operator in all four, with more than 50% subscriber share in each. Ghana alone contributed 32% of Optasia’s revenue, while MTN controls about three-quarters of that market. It would be surprising if MTN was not Optasia’s single most important distribution relationship.
Anglada concedes that MTN is “quite dominant” in Ghana, putting its market share at 70%–80%. His counter is that Ghana’s outsized contribution is partly temporary, boosted by a strong cedi and by what he calls the Nigerian “crisis” — a regulatory disruption that temporarily halted Optasia’s airtime lending services there and depressed revenue from what had been another major market.
He also argues that MTN’s microfinancing reach is less formidable than its telecoms footprint suggests. While MTN has a broad African footprint, its wallet and microfinancing activities are, in his words, “concentrated in a couple of markets”. In large telecoms markets such as South Africa and Nigeria, its mobile money footprint remains far smaller than its subscriber base.
There is something to that. Less persuasive is Anglada’s argument that MTN exposure should mainly be viewed market by market because local operating companies make their own commercial decisions. MTN is increasingly setting strategy at group level. At its June capital markets day, MTN Fintech CEO Serigne Dioum said the group wants to “move further up the lending value chain” and where appropriate secure licences to lend directly using its own balance sheet. Local regulations still have to be navigated country by country, but the strategic direction is increasingly being set from the centre.
More revealing is Anglada’s description of Optasia’s moat. He makes no claim that the service is impossible to replicate. “For me, it’s not difficult to internalise a service,” he says. His argument is that Optasia is the specialist and MTN the generalist, and that small differences in approval rates, defaults and recoveries can materially alter the economics. The pitch then is not that partners cannot bring lending in-house, but that they should still make more money by outsourcing it to Optasia.
Importantly, MTN’s insourcing threat is no longer theoretical. In its interim results, Optasia disclosed that a “long-standing partner” had taken day-to-day management of overdraft services in Ghana and Uganda in-house, with Cameroon to follow in the second half. The partner was not named, but Anglada in effect confirmed it was MTN, saying the intention had been communicated two years ago and that the product is now “going to transition to be delivered inside” after MTN built up some of the capability.
That disclosure sits slightly awkwardly alongside Optasia’s November 2025 IPO documents. The pre-listing statement warned that competition could intensify if “MNOs [mobile network operators] and mobile money operators begin to develop and provide services in-house”. What it does not appear to say is that MTN had already informed Optasia of plans to internalise an existing service.
Elsewhere, the pre-listing statement struck a more reassuring note, touting “high partner stickiness and long-term business retention”. There is a plausible materiality defence. Anglada says the overdraft product is high volume but low margin, so the profit hit is far smaller than the revenue loss.
Even so, IPO investors may feel short-changed that MTN’s already communicated insourcing plans were apparently not disclosed specifically, particularly given that founder and former CEO Bassim Haidar held a 19.3% beneficial interest ahead of the IPO. He had reduced that to 7.5% by year-end and subsequently sold another large block to FirstRand before buying back a small stake in June at a much lower price.
Optasia is clearly trying to diversify beyond telecoms distribution, and banking is one obvious route. FNB already uses its technology for airtime advances and is developing a cash-advance product within its wallet ecosystem. Anglada argues that traditional banks struggle to profitably serve the bottom end of the consumer market through branches and conventional credit infrastructure. The opportunity, he says, lies in “all the banks deploying wallets, competing with mobile money in the different markets”.
The logic is sound, though FNB’s African retail footprint is hardly MTN-sized. At least the bank has a strong incentive to see Optasia prosper. Parent FirstRand bought 20.1% of the company at R19 a share concurrent with the IPO and has since raised its stake to 26.1%. At around R14.50, that original entry point is roughly a quarter underwater. And there is another interesting FNB link. Optasia chair Michael Jordaan is a former FNB CEO, while his family trust has an indirect economic interest in the company through a fund structure linked to Chronos, Optasia’s largest shareholder.
A second diversification strategy is more controversial. In April, Optasia paid $30m for Finergi, a prepaid electricity credit business acquired from an entity controlled by Haidar. The deal went through an independent director approval process reviewed by independent adviser BDO Corporate Finance, but shareholders were nevertheless asked to put considerable faith in future execution.
Since acquisition, Finergi has generated no revenue and a $596,000 loss. Anglada expects Finergi to start producing revenue in 2027, get to operational breakeven in 2028 and potentially grow into a business similar in size to today’s ACS operation by 2030.
There is at least an intriguing technical angle. Finergi embeds repayment into future prepaid electricity purchases and can, Anglada says, “intercept the repayment at the meter level, at the switch level”. If that materially improves collection rates, there could be a valuable business in it.
Optasia is also pushing into merchant lending. Its first Ghana rollout had grown from about 800 merchants in May to more than 56,000 by July, with Uganda following soon after. The appeal is larger ticket sizes and repeat borrowing, while bank wallets could eventually provide another distribution route beyond the traditional telecoms ecosystem.
But as Optasia broadens its lending ecosystem, MTN is building more capability of its own. MTN has partnered with Ant International, the global fintech arm of China’s Ant Group, initially to upgrade its MoMo platform. Ant also offers a broader lending tech stack, including AI-driven credit scoring, automated decisioning, loan management and collections tools. Anglada distinguishes between the wallet platform and the lending stack but concedes that MTN is “trying partially to deploy internally” some of those capabilities. His expectation is a hybrid model, with MTN potentially using its own or Ant technology for some services while continuing to rely on Optasia for others.
There is also an accounting nuance to note. MFS generated 72% of first-half revenue, up from 62% a year earlier, but the comparison is not apples with apples. In ACS, Optasia acts as agent and recognises only its share of revenue; in MFS, it recognises the full take rate and pays other participants through costs. As management notes: “The unit economics are different and the profitability of the service is different.” With no ACS vs MFS ebitda split, investors should not assume 72% of revenue equates to 72% of group economics.
At around R14.50, Optasia trades on roughly 15 times forward earnings, but analysts remain cautious. The consensus is a hold, with the average 12-month target around R16.50–R16.70. Morgan Stanley’s James Starke described the first-half result as broadly in line with guidance and welcomed the upgraded 2026 outlook, while citing net debt, the changing business mix and second-half execution as areas to watch.
SBG Securities was similarly positive on the growth runway in a July note, forecasting revenue rising from $265m in 2025 to $508m by 2028 and ebitda from $115m to $216m. The potential loss of business from MTN is its primary concern. That neatly captures the valuation debate. The growth opportunity is substantial, but so are the questions around customer concentration and the durability of Optasia’s moat.
