MTN MoMo · Fintech · 2020–2021

Designing mobile money where the phone is the bank

MTN’s Mobile Money (MoMo) lets you store, send and receive money using your phone, no bank account needed, and it works on the most basic feature phones.

My role

I led the design team across MoMo's Consumer and Agent apps: defining production specs, facilitating design reviews, and collaborating closely with business stakeholders and core development teams to ship new features. The brief was radical inclusivity: users without bank accounts, transacting on feature phones, where every screen has to earn trust in a single glance. That's the standard behind a platform now enabling more than 50 million people across 16 African countries to send and receive money, pay for services, and manage cash transactions from a phone.

MoMo onboarding illustration: send and receive money simply, hassle-free — Onboarding, illustrated

MTN MoMo sign-in, cash-in and wallet home screens — The Consumer app: sign in, cash in, and the wallet home screen

Verifying identity without a bank account

I designed the identity step in registration as a short liveness video: no branch visit, no paperwork, just a phone camera and a well-lit room. It replaces the trust a bank branch provides, so I made sure every guideline was spelled out before recording starts, not buried after.

MoMo registration step 4: record a short verification video, with on-screen guidelines — Step 4: identity, without a branch

Built for any phone, not just smartphones

I designed knowing the app was only ever half the product. Every core flow, balance checks, sends, airtime purchases, had to hold up over USSD too: no data, no smartphone, just a phone keypad. That parallel channel is why MoMo reaches people traditional banking never could.

Real USSD reply menu: check balance, send money, buy airtime and bundles, pay and buy, cash-in, cash-out, quick loans, approvals — The entire menu, on any handset

“South Africans, accustomed to paying fees every time they use a card or banking solution, are increasingly seeking alternatives to traditional financial services offerings.”Insurance Institute of South Africa (IISA)

Cash-out without a bank card

I designed MoMo vouchers: a way to cash out at an ATM or agent, or send a voucher to someone else entirely, using only a PIN texted to their phone. No card, no account required for the recipient, just a code that expires safely if unused.

MoMo voucher cash-out flow: create a secret voucher key, confirm cash-out, voucher sent — The voucher flow, start to finish

Sisi Nono, the MoMo chatbot

I designed the conversational flows for Sisi Nono, MoMo's in-app assistant, on the principle that not every question needs a call centre. She answers account questions, walks new users through registration, and explains account limits in plain language, on demand.

Sisi Nono MoMo chatbot introducing herself as a trusted MoMo expert — Sisi Nono, MoMo's in-app assistant

Opening MoMo to businesses

I led design on the agent app's biggest milestone: corporate accounts for outbound transactions. Any business with a corporate account could now bill, send and receive value from MTN users, opening the platform beyond person-to-person transfers for the first time. MoMo's merchant tooling has since extended to services like RidewithMoMo, helping drivers and small operators accept digital payment directly.

Outcome

My redesign of the MoMo app improved user experience and feature accessibility by 15%, work that shipped for a platform now used by more than 50 million people who might otherwise have no digital financial account at all.