A shift in consumer behaviour and telecom strategy is rapidly altering how township residents buy mobile connectivity—leaving traditional corner shops scrambling to adapt.
MTN’s deliberate prepaid “reset” in South Africa tells a tale of two realities. On corporate balance sheets, the strategy is yielding positive results: data revenue is up 4.4%, network traffic has surged nearly 28%, and more customers are recharging directly through digital banking channels rather than buying physical vouchers.
Yet on the ground, this migration toward a digital-first model threatens to leave micro-retailers behind.
For shop owners like Sibusiso Mbatha, the shift away from physical airtime sales imperils both immediate margins and customer volume.
“We will lose customers; not everyone has a smartphone, and not everyone is on Instagram,” Mbatha notes, highlighting the digital divide that persists across kasi counters.
When consumers buy data directly through banking apps or top up via digital platforms, spaza shops lose not only the commission on airtime sales, but also the impulse buys—a loaf of bread, a cold drink, or a quick snack—that happen when a customer walks through the door.
To survive this transition, township entrepreneurs are being forced to pivot from basic voucher sellers to broader digital hubs.
For micro-businesses in the kasi economy, adapting to mobile telecom’s digital evolution is no longer optional—it is a matter of survival.
From January to June 2026, MTN South Africa’s voice revenue dropped by 10.2% compared to the previous year, and prepaid service revenue fell by 3.3%. At the same time, network data traffic grew by 27.7%, and prepaid data revenue increased by 4.4%.
MTN South Africa is in the midst of a deliberate reset of its prepaid customer base, after recording a marginal decline in subscribers and only 1.5% growth in service revenue in the first half of 2026. Of its 39.5 million South African subscribers, 28.2 million were prepaid customers.
For the country’s township economy, that matters because behind the telecoms industry’s subscriber numbers is another economy: thousands of small businesses that depend on everyday consumers walking through their doors.
From airtime to data
The traditional airtime economy was largely built around voice calls and small airtime purchases. But smartphones have changed the equation. Customers increasingly need data for WhatsApp, TikTok, Facebook, online banking, streaming, schoolwork and job applications.
MTN’s own numbers reflect that transformation. Across the group, active data users reached more than 179 million in the first half of 2026, while data traffic increased by almost 23%.
For township entrepreneurs, this creates both a challenge and an opportunity. The business selling a simple airtime voucher may need to become a business selling a broader range of digital services.
That could mean data bundles, electronic payments, money transfers, bill payments, and other financial services. WhatsApp can replace a traditional call. A call note can replace several SMSes, and social media has become part of how people communicate.
MTN says its prepaid reset is beginning to show encouraging signs and that it is prepared to accelerate airtime advances as conditions improve.
