Transaction volumes rose 139% and revenue 80% as the fintech enters a leadership transition with a larger task of turning customer scale into deeper financial relationships

• Omari has surpassed 2.2 million customers in Zimbabwe
• Transaction volumes increased 139% while revenue rose 80% year on year
• Arthur Matsaudza leaves a scaled platform whose next leadership must deepen usage and monetisation

Harare - Old Mutual Zimbabwe’s O’mari has surpassed 2.2 million customers, with transaction volumes rising 139% and revenue increasing 80% year on year in the first half of 2026, giving the fintech considerably more economic depth than the customer-acquisition numbers that defined its early growth.

Revenue-generating customers increased 71% over the same period. The three measures provide a clearer picture of the business: O’mari is adding customers, substantially more money is moving through the platform and that activity is translating into higher revenue.

The next stage comes with a change at the top. Arthur Matsaudza, who founded O’mari within Old Mutual and led the fintech as Managing Director, is leaving to become Chief Executive Officer of ZB Bank effective 1 October 2026. His successor will inherit a different business from the one Matsaudza started, with considerable customer reach already established and a larger commercial test around how much value Old Mutual can generate from that reach.

Customer acquisition remains part of Old Mutual’s strategy, but it can no longer be the main measure of O’mari’s progress.

Old Mutual’s 2026 priorities include acquiring new customers, diversifying revenue and products, widening distribution and reducing the cost of serving customers. Management also specifically identifies broader distribution as part of the plan for scaling O’mari. 

That places O’mari in a wider role than a standalone payments business. Someone brought onto the platform through a salary, remittance or transfer can subsequently transact, save, borrow and potentially take up insurance or investment products. Old Mutual already manufactures many of those products, allowing the wallet to operate as a front door into the wider financial-services group.

There is evidence that O’mari has been expanding Old Mutual’s addressable market rather than simply migrating existing clients onto another channel. The platform reached one million customers within its first 11 months, with Old Mutual subsequently disclosing that about 90% of those early customers were new to the group.

That makes the distribution opportunity larger. O’mari now spans US dollar and ZiG wallets, transfers, merchant and bill payments, international remittance receipts, cards, savings and short-term digital lending. Its business offering also covers merchant payments, payroll and bulk disbursements.

Each service creates another route for bringing money and customers onto the platform. Payroll and corporate disbursements can establish the initial relationship, remittances provide recurring inflows and merchant acceptance gives customers places to spend those balances. Savings, credit, insurance and investments can then extend the relationship beyond payments.

Old Mutual has already tested that progression. In earlier disclosures, the group described using O’mari for salary disbursements to agricultural workers before offering savings and funeral cover into those relationships. The approach gives the group a way of acquiring customers digitally and introducing additional products without building an equivalent physical distribution footprint.

The first-half numbers show that usage is accelerating. Transaction volumes increased 139%, considerably faster than the 71% growth in revenue-generating customers, while revenue rose 80%. 

The relationship between those numbers now becomes important. O’mari is processing substantially more activity, while revenue is also growing strongly. The next chief executive will have to maintain that volume growth while increasing the value Old Mutual derives from each active relationship.

Zimbabwe’s changing transaction-fee environment adds to that assignment. Old Mutual identified the February 2026 banking pricing reforms as a source of pressure on non-interest income, with management responding through greater revenue diversification and transaction-volume growth. 

For O’mari, that makes a strategy centred heavily on charging for individual transactions less attractive over time. Scale remains useful because higher volumes can spread platform costs across more activity, while a broader product relationship creates additional ways of earning from the same customer.

This is where Old Mutual enters the payments contest differently from a pure wallet operator. EcoCash, InnBucks, banks and other platforms compete for transfers and everyday spending, while interoperability has made it easier for customers to move money across networks. Old Mutual also has insurance, savings and investment businesses sitting behind O’mari.

The commercial opportunity is therefore to use payments to acquire and engage customers before moving some of them deeper into the group.

Old Mutual’s wider Zimbabwe operations provide substantial products for that distribution network. Gross premiums and pension contributions reached US$52.6 million in the first half, while policyholder funds stood at US$1.13 billion. Asset management funds under management reached US$1.79 billion, with net client cash flows rising 80% to US$70.6 million. 

O’mari does not have to manufacture those products itself. Its value to Old Mutual can come from lowering the cost of finding customers, increasing the frequency with which the group interacts with them and creating a digital route through which other products can be distributed.

The available disclosures do not yet establish how successfully that final step is working. Old Mutual does not separately disclose O’mari’s profit, the proportion of registered customers who are active, customer acquisition costs or the number of wallet users converted into other Old Mutual products.

Those gaps leave a clear scorecard for the incoming leadership.

Old Mutual says it will continue investing in digital transformation and has a pipeline of new products planned for the second half of 2026. Analyst Briefing Presentation H1 2026 Results - Zimbabwe vfinal.pdf For O’mari, the measures that matter increasingly move towards transaction frequency, revenue-generating customers, revenue per active user, recurring inflows and uptake of savings, credit, insurance and investment products.

Matsaudza leaves behind a platform with more than 2.2 million customers and rapidly growing transaction activity. His successor inherits the harder commercial assignment: keeping that scale growing while turning more of it into recurring revenue and wider product relationships.

O’mari has already shown that Old Mutual can bring millions of Zimbabweans through a digital front door. The next chief executive will increasingly be judged on how much of Old Mutual’s wider financial-services business can follow them through it.

- Equity Axis News