NEW DELHI: Airtel Money is preparing for a London listing in the second half of 2026, Bharti Airtel executive VC Gopal Vittal said on Wednesday. Airtel Money is a mobile commerce service that allows money transfer via the phone.“Airtel Money has now achieved meaningful scale with Q1 revenue of over $400 million, growing at 26% year-on-year in constant currency terms. The opportunity ahead remains significant, with 64% of adults across our footprint still without access to a formal bank account.“Given this growth trajectory and the large addressable opportunity, Airtel Money is now preparing for a London listing in the second half of 2026,” he said.The move comes at a time when Bharti Airtel reported 37% profit growth in the first quarter thanks largely to consumers opting for higher value packages, increased data usage, strong customer additions and growth across its India and Africa businesses, while tariffs remained the same. As a result, Airtel’s average revenue per user (ARPU) increased to Rs 264 during the quarter from Rs 250 a year ago.“Our focus remains on accelerating ARPU growth through portfolio premiumisation on mobile, while continuing to maintain a competitive share of customer net additions. Post-paid is a key output growth lever for us with significant opportunity ahead of us… Within pre-paid itself, we continue to see a large opportunity to move customers to their most relevant plans by using customer context and next best action capabilities on our digital stack. In addition, handset upgrades from feature phones to smartphones, rising data usage, 5G adoption and international roaming provide meaningful headroom for ARPU expansion going forward,” Vital said during an investor call, adding that the Africa business is also reporting strong growth.Airtel India MD and CEO Shashwat Sharma said: “(In Q1) we added 33 lakh revenue-earning customers and 50 lakh smartphone data customers. We added 10 lakh postpaid customers this quarter, which is the highest-level addition in any quarter for us. Postpaid customers now account for 8% plus of our total customer base.” The company completed a share swap transaction in Q1 that increased its stake in Airtel Africa to more than 79%.
