Airtel Africa confirms London for the Airtel Money listing, days before a $515 million deadline

Airtel Africa has named the London Stock Exchange as its preferred venue for listing Airtel Money. It said so on Thursday 23 July 2026, in the same statement that carried its results for the three months to 30 June. The listing is targeted for the second half of this year, subject to regulatory approvals.

Chief executive Sunil Taldar said a London listing “will provide access to a broad international investor base.”

Airtel Money is the wallet that sits on an Airtel line. You deposit cash with an agent, send money, pay a bill, buy airtime, move funds to and from a bank account. In Kenya it is the service that competes with M-PESA. Airtel runs it in 14 countries across sub-Saharan Africa, and it produced 21.8% of Airtel Africa’s revenue last quarter. It is owned inside Airtel Africa, which is itself listed in London and Lagos. An initial public offering would carve it out and sell shares separately, so an investor could buy Airtel Money without buying the phone network.

Why the venue was still in question

This listing has been promised and postponed repeatedly, first for 2025, then for the first half of 2026. In May, Airtel pushed it again to the second half, citing market conditions after geopolitical developments and warning that higher energy costs would squeeze margins. We covered the full-year results where that delay was announced and what the repeated delays had done to the valuation.

The venue was also open. Airtel had weighed the United Arab Emirates alongside London, so Thursday’s statement closes that question.

The deadline

In 2021 Airtel Africa sold 22.1% of Airtel Mobile Commerce BV, the Dutch entity that holds Airtel Money, to four minority investors for about $550 million. That valued the business at $2.65 billion.

Two of those investors, TPG’s Rise Fund with 8.05% and Mastercard with 4.02%, hold put options. If no listing happened within four years, they could require Airtel to buy their shares back at fair value. The original deadline was July 2025. Airtel announced on 1 August 2025 that both had agreed to defer it by 12 months.

That deferred period ends on 31 July 2026, four days from now. Airtel Africa’s 2026 annual report puts the potential put option liability at $515 million as at 31 March 2026, down from $542 million a year earlier after dividends paid to the option holders. The figure was reported by The EastAfrican in June.

The option is a right, not an automatic payment. From 31 July the two investors may choose to sell back, at a price set by an independent valuation. Airtel has not linked its London announcement to that date, and neither do we.

What Airtel has not said

Airtel has not given the valuation, how much the sale will raise, what percentage will be sold, whether the shares will be newly issued or sold by existing holders, or the listing date.

The Financial Times has reported that the offering could value Airtel Money at around $10 billion, roughly KES 1.29 trillion, and raise about $1.5 billion, roughly KES 194 billion, with Citi leading the work. The Kenyan Wallstreet carried those figures and noted Airtel has confirmed neither.

For scale, Safaricom in its entirety is worth around KES 1.4 trillion on the Nairobi Securities Exchange. If the reported figure holds, Airtel Money alone would be valued at close to the whole of Safaricom. Bloomberg earlier gave a wider range of $7 billion to $10 billion.

The numbers Airtel did publish

From the results for the quarter to 30 June 2026:

• Airtel Money customers: 56.5 million, up 23.3% in a year
• Mobile money revenue: $404 million, about KES 52 billion, up 38.9% in reported currency and 25.8% in constant currency
• Value moved through the platform in the quarter: $61.4 billion, about KES 7.9 trillion
• Annualised total processed value: above $245 billion, about KES 31.6 trillion, up 51.5%
• Value moved per customer per month: $371, about KES 47,900, up 13.0%

Reported currency growth includes African currencies strengthening against the dollar. Constant currency strips that out, so 25.8% shows how much the business actually grew. Annualised total processed value takes the quarter’s $61.4 billion out to a full year, and it is money passing through the system, not money Airtel keeps.

Across the group there were 189 million customers, 87.3 million of them on data, and smartphone penetration reached 51.0% from 45.8%. Group revenue was $1.85 billion, profit after tax $198 million, up from $156 million.

The margin that moved the wrong way

Airtel Money’s EBITDA margin fell to 49.1%, down 363 basis points. The telecoms side rose 323 basis points to 50.1%. Airtel says the cause was a renegotiation of intra-group agreements, and that the group’s combined margin was unaffected.

Airtel Money pays the telco for airtime distribution, agent networks and network access. While both sit inside one company, moving cost between them changes nothing at group level. After a separate listing, that split sets what Airtel Money’s profits look like to its own shareholders. The prospectus should give the terms.

What this means in Kenya

Airtel Money Kenya is a separately licensed company, carved out of Airtel Networks Kenya in 2022 so the Central Bank of Kenya could supervise it directly. The EastAfrican has reported that Airtel Mobile Commerce BV holds the mobile money operations in all 14 markets except the Nigerian payment service bank. On that reading, Kenyan wallets sit inside the entity being listed. Airtel has published no market-by-market list.

Kenya matters to the pitch. In the Communications Authority’s report for January to March 2026, Safaricom held 89.1% of mobile money subscriptions. The remaining 10.9% is effectively all Airtel Money, since Telkom’s T-Kash rounds to nothing. When the regulator first published that split, for the quarter to September 2022, Safaricom had 96.8% and Airtel Money 3.1%.

Two things drove that climb. Price, including free Airtel-to-Airtel transfers, and cash access, which Airtel bought by opening bank agent networks to its customers, including 22,000 KCB agents in June. Part of the price advantage has since gone. Earlier this month we found Airtel had quietly raised its fees for sending to M-PESA to match Safaricom’s rates.

Airtel does not break out Kenya. East Africa produced $297 million of the $404 million in mobile money revenue, and that region also covers Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

What to watch

The prospectus ends the guessing. It will name the offer size, the stake and the price range, and should give the intra-group terms. Until then, the $10 billion figure is press reporting, not company disclosure.

Then two dates. 31 July, when the put options become exercisable. And the Communications Authority’s next quarterly report, covering April to June 2026, which is the first reading of whether the fee increase cost Airtel any of that 10.9%. On the regulator’s recent publication pattern it is due around September. Airtel Money Kenya also has no managing director, after Anne Kinuthia-Otieno left on 25 July.