MTN Uganda Announces $270K Start-up Fund

MTN Uganda has launched a $270,000 Start-up Fund and has granted access to third-parties with iits Mobile Money Access Programming Interface (API). This will create products that ease payment options and leverage on the 10 million MTN clients registered with Mobile Money.

Ms. Elsa Muzzolini, the General Manager, Mobile Financial Services MTN Uganda said “This is an exciting development for the Ugandan start-ups ecosystem. Innovators will now be able to develop applications that ease the customer experience in terms of mobile money payments.

Developers and programmers in Uganda will get free access to MTN mobile money API platforms to integrate the technology into their web and mobile products with ease and grow the mobile money payments ecosystem.

The MTN Mobile Money API will be accessed by developers online here , ending the lengthy manual application process developers go through. The online system provides an option where they can test it using a sandbox available on the website before the developer’s product goes live.

MTN’s Ugx1bn (US$270,000) start-up fund is expected to provide a financial boost to start-ups that will participate in the MTN innovation challenge series. The first of these is the MTN Open API Challenge which starts on the 3rd of December, 2018. Participants will make their entries on the innovation challenge website.

MTN Uganda also unveiled Ugx310m (US$81,000) high speed internet connectivity package to the Innovation Village through MTN Foundation. The package includes free internet connectivity for use by young developers and innovators as part of its youth empowerment drive.

MTN Uganda will be working with several technology and innovation hubs around the country to facilitate the training of developers on how to use the platform.