Ethio Telecom plans to increase telebirr’s merchant network from about 440,100 to 569,300 during the 2026/27 business year, a 29.4% expansion that says more about the wallet’s next phase than another customer-registration milestone.
telebirr closed the previous year with 60.6 million registered customers, 19.48 million users active within 90 days and 2.61 billion annual transactions. Transaction value reached ETB 4.19 trillion. Ethio Telecom’s 2025/26 performance report also says the platform had 410,700 agents and 440,100 merchants.
With that scale, the problem changes. A wallet becomes more valuable when customers can spend from it directly rather than repeatedly cashing out.
Merchant density is the next network effect
Mobile-money growth is often measured by registrations because the number is easy to communicate. Merchant acceptance is harder and more important.
A customer who receives money digitally but cannot use it at nearby businesses has an incentive to convert the balance back to cash. Each cash-out adds friction and weakens the claim that the payment system is becoming a true substitute for notes and coins.
telebirr supports merchant payment through QR codes, POS terminals, merchant identifiers and its app. Ethio Telecom’s merchant documentation describes proximity payments at restaurants, shops and other physical businesses.
The 2026/27 plan makes acceptance expansion explicit. Ethio Telecom wants to add 129,300 merchants while increasing agents by a much smaller 42,100. That difference suggests the network is maturing from cash conversion toward spending.
Ethiopia now has enough wallet scale to test behaviour
telebirr is no longer operating alone. M-PESA and other licensed payment providers give merchants and users alternatives, while banks are becoming more connected to digital-payment rails.
Ethio Telecom says telebirr is integrated with 33 banks, microfinance institutions and savings cooperatives. That interoperability lets money move between bank accounts and the wallet more easily, making telebirr less dependent on a closed loop.
The next competitive advantage may therefore be where the wallet can be used and what financial services can be layered on top of transaction history.
Ethio Telecom already offers savings and collateral-free microcredit with bank partners. The company reported ETB 19.51 billion in digital lending to 5.65 million customers during 2025/26. Merchant activity can add another source of data around business cash flow, although lending decisions still need responsible underwriting and consumer protections.
Formal acceptance does not automatically replace cash
A national merchant count can overstate real usage if businesses keep QR codes at the counter but customers rarely pay through them.
A 2026 nationally representative study by the Merchant Payments Observatory found that 58.8% of Ethiopian micro-enterprise merchants accepted digital payments, but rural adoption was 26%. It also found that most digital flows still landed in personal accounts rather than dedicated business accounts.
That distinction matters. Merchant digitisation is deeper when a business can reconcile sales, separate personal and commercial money, build records and use those records for other financial products.
The network therefore needs active merchant behaviour, not only onboarding.
Why it matters
Ethiopia is becoming one of Africa’s largest mobile-money markets by registered users. The next question is whether that scale changes everyday commerce.
Ethio Telecom’s merchant target is a useful signal because it shifts attention from customer acquisition to acceptance infrastructure. If more payments stay digital after they reach a user’s wallet, telebirr becomes a broader economic rail rather than a transfer product.
For competing fintechs, the implication is clear. The market is moving toward depth of use, and merchant tools will matter more than another large registration number.
What to watch
Ethio Telecom projects 4.99 billion telebirr transactions worth ETB 7.4 trillion in 2026/27. Watch the share generated by merchant purchases, the number of active rather than registered merchants, and the balance between urban and rural acceptance.
Also watch whether merchant data begins to support better business products such as working-capital credit, inventory services or formal bookkeeping. That is where payment acceptance can become a broader small-business platform.
