Vision&Insights

Thought Leadership

Perspectives on telecom and fintech

Thought leadership from Mountasser Hachem on the industries he has spent twenty-eight years building.

The future of telecom in emerging markets

How mobile operators can unlock new revenue streams through A2P monetization, fintech convergence, and eSIM technology.

Telecom

The telecom industry in emerging markets sits at a crossroads. Operators own the most valuable asset in the digital economy - the connection to the customer - yet most have failed to monetize it beyond basic voice and data. The opportunity lies in three convergence points: A2P messaging monetization, where operators can reclaim billions in enterprise messaging revenue currently lost to grey routes; telecom-fintech convergence, where the operator's billing relationship becomes a banking relationship; and eSIM technology, which transforms the SIM from a physical constraint into a software opportunity. At Monty Holding, we have spent twenty-eight years building infrastructure across all three of these vectors. The operators who will thrive in the next decade are those who stop thinking of themselves as pipe providers and start thinking of themselves as platform companies.

Fintech

Why financial inclusion requires telecom-fintech convergence

The 1.4 billion unbanked adults globally represent both a moral imperative and a massive market opportunity.

Traditional banking has failed 1.4 billion adults worldwide. The reasons are structural: brick-and-mortar branches don't scale to rural areas, KYC requirements exclude those without formal documentation, and transaction minimums make micro-savings uneconomical. Mobile operators, by contrast, already have relationships with these exact populations. They have identity verification through SIM registration. They have distribution through airtime agent networks. And they have trust built through years of daily transactions. This is why I founded MyMonty - not as another neobank for the overbanked, but as a bridge between the telecom infrastructure we already operate and the financial services that billions of people need. When you own the network, the identity layer, and the payment rails, you can build a bank that reaches people traditional finance never will.