From M-Pesa’s mobile money empire to Careem Pay’s Gulf transfers, these operators are rewiring how value moves across the Middle East and Africa
The Middle East and Africa (MEA) send and receive some of the world’s largest remittance flows, and mobile money has become the backbone of financial access across much of the continent.
Global mobile money transaction value passed $2tn in 2025, with Africa accounting for roughly two-thirds. These five operators sit at the centre, moving money for hundreds of millions of people across the MEA.
M-Pesa (Safaricom / Vodacom)
Launched in Kenya in 2007, M-Pesa is Africa’s largest mobile money operator by transaction value, and one of the largest across the MEA. Jointly owned by Safaricom and Vodacom, its platforms processed $525.6bn in the year to March 2026 and serve more than 100 million financial-services customers across Kenya, Tanzania, the DRC, Egypt and beyond.
Lending, savings and merchant services now generate almost half of M-Pesa’s revenue. Vodacom is moving to take majority control of Safaricom, a deal held up in Kenya’s courts, to accelerate expansion.
MTN MoMo
MTN Mobile Money is the payments arm of Africa’s largest telecoms group. It processed $500.3bn across 2025, a 38% rise in constant-currency terms, on 23.3 billion transactions, and serves more than 60 million monthly active users from West to Southern Africa.
Lending facilitated through the platform reached $3.5bn. MTN is carving MoMo out as a standalone fintech, completing the split in Ghana in 2026, with Nigeria and Uganda to follow. Mastercard‘s investment values the unit near $5.2bn.
Onafriq
Onafriq, formerly MFS Africa, is the interoperability hub that stitches Africa’s fragmented payment systems together. Founded in 2009 by Dare Okoudjou, its “network of networks” connects more than 500 million mobile money wallets and over 200 million bank accounts across upward of 40 markets, letting a sender in one country pay a wallet in another.
In 2026 it launched the first wallet-based corridor between Nigeria and Ghana with PAPSS, rolled out Visa Pay in the DRC, and adopted stablecoin settlement.
Flutterwave
Flutterwave is Africa’s most valuable fintech, valued at around $3.3bn in a June 2026 Series E round that drew an equity investment from Ripple. Founded in 2016, it has processed over a billion transactions worth more than $50bn across 35 African markets.
Its Send App handles diaspora remittances and now holds 34 US money-transmitter licences. After acquiring Mono, Flutterwave secured a Nigerian banking licence, and it is building stablecoin rails, including Ripple’s RLUSD, to cut cross-border costs.
Careem Pay
Careem Pay, the financial arm of the Uber-owned super-app Careem, is reshaping outbound remittances from the Gulf.
Operating from the UAE, one of the world’s largest money-sending markets, it lets residents transfer to more than 35 countries, with foreign-exchange rates it says undercut banks by around half.
Through 2026 it added corridors across the MEA and beyond to Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Egypt, alongside India and Pakistan, and deepened its infrastructure deal with Adyen. Transfers settle into recipient bank accounts within minutes.
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