CASE STUDY
MVola Scales to Over 1 Billion Transactions Annually with WSO2
Product Area
API Management
Region
Africa
Industry
Financial Services
Highlights
Over 1 Billion Transactions Annually:
Supporting high-volume mission-critical operations with consistent month-over-month growth as customer demand accelerates.
10+ Million Customers Served:
Omnichannel access to mobile financial services—from USSD to the MVola Super App.
Driving Financial and Digital Inclusion in Madagascar:
Empowering the unbanked population with access to essential financial services. }
Overview
MVola, a subsidiary of the Axian Group and originally launched by Telma in 2010, is Madagascar’s leading mobile money service transforming the way millions access and manage financial services. It enables users to perform a range of financial transactions directly from their mobile phones, including sending and receiving money, paying bills, and purchasing goods and services. With over 10 million customers, MVola plays a key role in simplifying everyday financial transactions across the country.
In 2018, MVola became the first Electronic Money Institution (EMI) licensed in Madagascar. This was followed by a major milestone in 2021, when it became the country's first licensed Digital Bank. This shift allowed MVola to expand its offerings to include savings, loans, and insurance products. MVola has contributed significantly to improving financial inclusion in Madagascar, particularly for individuals who do not have access to traditional banking services. To further enhance accessibility, MVola introduced the MVola Fô feature in 2024. This allows any Malagasy citizen to open an MVola account through the MVola Super App, regardless of their mobile network provider.
In addition to serving local customers, MVola also provides a convenient alternative to cash for tourists visiting Madagascar. Visitors can set up an account to manage their spending more securely during their stay. MVola continues to focus on increasing access to financial services and supporting the broader goal of financial inclusion in Madagascar.
The successful implementation of WSO2's API Management platform has transformed our digital capabilities by enhancing performance, scalability, and visibility. It enables us to confidently manage over 35 million transactions per month and scale for future growth"
Lakruwan Senevirathne
Chief Information Officer
MVola
Challenge
- MVola aimed to modernize its Talend-based integration stack to better support growing transaction volumes and enable real-time customer-to-merchant interactions for its expanding user base.
- Reliance on its parent company, Telma, posed limitations. MVola needed a robust, scalable platform to operate independently while addressing ongoing infrastructure challenges.
- To expand its ecosystem and partner network, MVola aimed to empower third-party developers through a self-service portal for seamless integration of its payment services.
- Ensuring real-time performance, stability, and reliability for mission-critical systems was paramount as monthly transaction volumes surged.
MVola faced several technical and operational challenges as it scaled its mobile money services and transitioned toward becoming a licensed digital bank. Key issues included:
Objective
- Adopt a flexible and scalable API management platform to accelerate service innovation.
- Establish operational independence from its parent company, Telma and resolve existing infrastructure issues to ensure long-term service reliability.
- Ensure high speed, reliability and performance for mission-critical, high-volume payment transactions.
- Support and scale over one billion transactions annually across integration and API layers.
In their pursuit of continued market leadership and to overcome the challenges outlined above, MVola set out to achieve the following objectives:
Solution
To support MVola’s digital transformation and growing independence from its parent telecom provider, Telma, WSO2 provided a cloud-native integration and API management platform in partnership with iTelasoft that allowed MVola to fully own and operate its digital services infrastructure. Initially deployed within Telma’s data centers, WSO2 was later migrated to MVola’s standalone environment, giving the organization greater control, agility, and reliability in managing its mobile financial services. This transition was further reflective of Mvola’s growing autonomy and scale as its offerings and customer base expanded.
WSO2 API Manager facilitated Mvola by managing over 20 APIs that power a wide range of financial services, including but not limited to international remittances, utility bill payments, digital subscriptions, debit card top-ups, and instant loan disbursements. These APIs handle over 700 million transactions annually. Some of them are exposed securely to third-party developers through a branded MVola developer portal which allows external partners to easily integrate MVola’s payment capabilities into their websites and mobile apps, supporting the company’s vision of an open digital ecosystem.
WSO2 Integrator is instrumental to MVola in supporting customer-to-merchant transactions by connecting to Amdocs DFS which powers Mvola’s mobile wallet. It is one of the highest-volume APIs in the system, processing over 300 million transactions annually—underscoring the critical need for reliability and performance at scale. With WSO2, this integration remains stable, fast, and always available—playing a vital role in connecting MVola’s customer-facing channels, like the Super App and USSD, to its core financial systems.
The platform supports access through both USSD, which allows users with basic phones to access services without the need for an internet connection, and MVola’s Super App, which provides a more feature-rich experience for tech savvy users. This ensures reliable service availability to over 10 million customers, no matter which channel they prefer to use.As app usage continues to rise, WSO2’s scalable architecture ensures MVola is well-positioned to support increasing transaction volumes and introduce new digital services at speed.
The end-to-end implementation was delivered in partnership with iTelaSoft, who came on board at a pivotal moment in bringing WSO2’s full potential to life at MVola. iTelaSoft conducted a successful proof of concept that validated WSO2’s capabilities and introduced a collaborative governance model, laying the foundation for long-term success. This helped establish confidence in the WSO2 platform and laid the groundwork for a stable, future-ready greenfield implementation. Since then, iTelaSoft has continued to support MVola and other entities within the Axian Group, helping to deliver WSO2 solutions in high-stakes environments while aligning closely with business goals. Their role has been instrumental in translating WSO2’s technology into tangible, scalable impact across the region.
Results
- High Availability and Reliability for Critical Transactions: WSO2 ensured the payment API remained stable, fast, and available, even while processing over 300 million transactions annually.
- Security and Developer Ecosystem Growth: WSO2 enabled the creation of a developer portal, allowing external partners to securely integrate MVola’s payment services into their apps and websites, fostering a digital ecosystem, driving third-party participation and expanding MVola’s services and market reach.
- Scalable infrastructure for high volume transactions: With WSO2’s management of over 20 APIs, MVola is equipped to handle over 1 billion transactions annually across the WSO2 platform, ensuring high performance and efficiency at scale.
- Real-time insights and analytics: The integration with MVola’s ELK platform allowed real-time insights through API analytics and monitoring, enabling performance monitoring, advanced issue detection, and continuously optimized services for better customer experiences.
- Streamlined handling of 35+ million monthly transactions: Owing to centralized API lifecycle management and integrations that boost operational efficiency.
- Seamless access across channels: WSO2 enabled MVola to deliver consistent financial services via both USSD and the Super App, ensuring over 10 million customers to interact with their accounts regardless of device or connectivity.
- Improved governance and delivery model: In partnership with iTelasoft introduced a repeatable framework aligning product vendor, partner, and client ensuring predictable outcomes and strong collaboration.
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