KAMPALA – Uganda’s telecommunication giant MTN Uganda has appointed Mr. Richard Yego as its first substantive Managing Director, MTN Mobile Money Uganda Limited.
According to CEO East Africa Magazine, Richard, a Ugandan Executive with 16+ years’ experience in banking and digital financial services— six in banking and over 10 years in digital financial services has already put pen to paper on his lucrative contract and is set to start work this or next month.
MTN Mobile Money Uganda was spun off MTN Uganda, the largest telecom company in a regulatory sanctioned move, following the enactment of the National Payments Systems Act 2019 that sought to separate the financial services function from the telecoms function. The move was inspired by the growing influence of mobile money as an alternative payments system.
MTN Mobile Money holds a Payment Systems Operator Licence Class A(I) and a Payment Service Provider Licence Class A (I) issued by the Bank of Uganda.
With its 120,000 mobile money agents and approximately 8.5 million active 30-day MTN Mobile Money subscribers, the company is the leading mobile money company, closely followed by Airtel Mobile Commerce Uganda Limited, owned by Airtel Uganda Limited, MTN’s closes competitor.
According to industry sources, MTN Mobile Money controls about 54% of the market share, compared to Airtel’s 46%. MTN also controls 55% of the number of transactions, 60% of value transacted and 60% of mobile money sub-sector revenue.
Digital financial services expert
Before joining MTN Mobile Money, Richard has been the Chief Executive Officer, of the Agent Banking Company of Uganda Ltd (ABC).
ABC is an interoperable technology platform company, owned by banks in Uganda through their umbrella body, Uganda Bankers Association (UBA). It enables banking agents to provide agent banking services to customers of all the member banks.
At ABC, according to industry sources, Richard is credited for spearheading the integration of 22 Financial Institutions onto the shared agent banking system within three years.
He also successfully integrated five major third-party billers and collections, partners/aggregators, on the Shared Agent Banking Platform that in turn facilitated the implementation of key financial services products on the shared agent banking system including school fees payments, interbank funds transfers and bill collections, amongst other services.
As a result, transaction volume and transaction value rose by 448% and 571% respectively between 2019 and 2021. He also led a 630% growth in gross revenue between 2019 and 2021 and by February 2021, helped ABC to break even, all in under three years.
Before being elevated to Managing Director at ABC, Richard was between February 2018 and March 2019 the Commercial Director, at the same company.
Prior to ABC, he was between August 2016 and January 2018, the Ag. Director, Airtel Money at Airtel Uganda Limited.
In that role, he was instrumental in establishing a foothold in the market where Airtel was the second player to launch the service. Among key achievements was, growing the Airtel Money 30-day active subscriber base by over 50% from 3 million to over 4.5 million subscribers.
He also successfully integrated Airtel Money onto 20 out of the 24 commercial banks’ Bank2Wallet and Wallet2Bank service, allowing customers to move money from their Airtel Money accounts to the bank and vice versa. Relatedly, he also successfully led the rollout of the Cardless ATM cash withdrawal service with Interswitch EA and Equity Bank.
During his leadership, he also led, the rollout of over 60,000 Agents and 3,000 Airtel Money kiosks across the country as well as signed up 14 commercial banks to carry out Super Agency and Agency Business of Airtel Money, amongst other achievements.
Before he was elevated to the Ag. Mobile Money Director role, he had serviced in various roles at Airtel Money such as Airtel Money Operations Director, between October 2013 and August 2016 and Airtel Money Settlements Manager from August 2011 to September 2013.
Richard also holds significant banking experience, having worked at Standard Chartered Bank Uganda, one of Uganda’s top 5 banks, as Manager Tax Collections (February 2010 – September 2010) and Cash Management Operations Officer (September 2008 – January 2010);
He also worked as a Credit Officer at Centenary Rural Development Bank Limited in 2008.
Richard holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Makerere University amongst other qualifications.
