Africa's mobile money business has spent years buried inside its parent phone firms. Now one of the biggest players wants out.
Airtel Africa Plc is lining up a London listing for its mobile money arm. The deal could raise as much as $2 billion.
Early talks point to a price tag as high as $10 billion. If it lands there, it would be one of the biggest African fintech deals ever.
Airtel Money is a phone-based pay tool. Users send and get cash from their phone.
They don't need a bank account. Most people in the region don't have one.
That turns a basic phone into a wallet. The pitch to public markets is the same one fintech firms have made about Africa for years.
After a long stretch of doubt, it is finally landing with bigger checks. Mobile money sales are growing faster than the parent phone firms that birthed them.
The London listing could raise between $1.5 billion and $2 billion. Citigroup is leading the work.
The UAE and other parts of Europe are still in the mix. But London has been the top pick for months.
Airtel Money's nine-month sales rose 29.4% to $986 million. Users crossed 52 million for the first time.
Both are growing much faster than the wider Airtel Africa business they sit inside. A $10 billion price tag puts the unit in line with European fintech names.
Those names took years to scale. Africa's biggest pay tools are now being priced like real growth stocks.
The list of backers reads like one too. TPG, Mastercard, and an arm of the Qatar Investment Authority hold stakes in Airtel Money.
CEO Sunil Taldar said in February that Airtel was set to list the unit by mid-2026. The firm wants to close the gap on M-Pesa in East Africa.
It also wants to catch MTN's MoMo across the rest of the continent. Both rivals have been adding millions of users a year.
A win on this IPO would also give London a rare African fintech listing. The London market has been losing names to New York.
That is one reason the bankers there want to land this deal.
Africa has long been the next big story in fintech. For years, the deals didn't match the hype.
That has shifted. Visa, Stripe, and Mastercard have all placed big bets on the region in the past three years.
Tiger Global and SoftBank have done the same. The Airtel Money IPO would put a market price on a top player.
It would also set a clear bar for the next firm in line.
The plans are still early. The size, timing, and venue are not final.
Airtel could still pivot to a new market or a new setup if the math doesn't work. What is final is the demand.
Funds that once saw African fintech as too risky are now lining up for the listing.