Mobile money fee checker

MTN and Airtel side by side

Both networks charge the same to send, whichever network the money is going to, and their agent cash-out bands match at every amount except the top one: above UGX 4,000,000 MTN charges 20,000 where Airtel charges 18,000. The bank push differs more. Below UGX 60,000 Airtel charges by band where MTN charges a flat 1,500, so small amounts move more cheaply on Airtel; from UGX 125,000 up the two are the same again.

ATM withdrawal is shown for MTN only, since Airtel publishes no ATM band table. Sending abroad is Airtel only, for the same reason.

Agent cash-out costs about three times a bank push

Take UGX 1,000,000 in rent sitting in an MTN wallet. Pushing it straight to a bank account costs UGX 6,150. Walking to an agent and cashing it out costs UGX 17,500, roughly three times as much, and an ATM withdrawal costs UGX 16,950, not far behind. If your bank account is the destination anyway, sending it there directly rather than cashing out and redepositing saves real money every single month.

The 0.5% excise duty, and where it does and does not apply

Uganda charges a 0.5% excise duty on withdrawals of cash from mobile money, calculated on the amount withdrawn rather than on MTN’s own fee. It is a separate line from the 15% duty already built into the operator’s fee itself. We checked the amending Bill for this financial year directly: it touches several other excise items but leaves this one alone, so the 0.5% carries into FY 2026/27 unchanged. A proposal to cut it to 0.25% did not make it into the Bill.

The duty applies to cash withdrawals, meaning an agent cash-out or an ATM withdrawal, which is why those two routes show it here. A push to a bank account is not a withdrawal of cash on the statute’s own wording, so we assume it is untaxed, but no regulator guidance directly confirms that for the wallet-to-bank case specifically. We show it as an assumption rather than a fact.

The merchant question MTN itself has not answered

If you collect rent through a MoMoPay merchant code instead of a personal number, the fee that matters most is what MTN charges you to receive it. We looked, and MTN’s own website gives two different answers on two different pages: one says a merchant is not charged at all and receives the full amount, the other says an Individual Merchant pays 1% and a Business Merchant pays 2% of every payment received.

On UGX 1,000,000 of rent a month, the gap between those two answers is UGX 240,000 a year. That is too large a number to guess at, so the merchant field on this tool has no pre-filled percentage at all. Put in what your own settlement statement actually shows, or confirm the rate with MTN before you rely on a merchant code for rent collection.

The tenant’s side is separate

The send fee shown here is what the payer, usually the tenant, is charged to send the money to you. It never comes out of what you receive. If you are quoting a tenant a total cost of paying by mobile money, that fee is theirs, not yours, and it is worth saying so when you share this.

Where these numbers came from, and when to re-check

Every fee band above was read directly off MTN’s own published tariff page, checked on 2026-07-28. That page carries no effective date, no version number and no downloadable schedule. It is whatever MTN currently has live. Mobile money fees are set by the operator and can change at any time without notice, so treat this as current as of the date shown, and re-check MTN’s page yourself before relying on it for a large transfer.

For the fuller picture on collecting rent by mobile money, covering how MTN and Airtel compare, the hidden cost of a personal SIM, and how automated matching removes the reconciliation problem, see how to collect rent via MTN mobile money in Uganda.