London got its biggest new stock listing in five years on Friday, but the debut was quiet.

Airtel Money, a mobile payments company that operates across Africa, priced its shares at £1.96 each, valuing it at about £5.3 billion, City AM reported. Existing owners, including the Qatar Investment Authority and Mastercard, sold 270 million shares, raising about £529 million.

The shares opened flat, rose about 2%, then fell into the red, City AM said. VCCircle reported they slipped below the offer price, trading around £1.93 to £1.94.

Airtel Money lets people send, save and borrow money using their phones. It has more than 50 million customers. Its parent company, Airtel Africa, is Africa's third-largest wireless carrier and is mostly owned by Indian billionaire Sunil Mittal's Bharti Enterprises.

The listing matters for London. The London Stock Exchange has not had a new listing worth more than £1 billion since 2021, when Deliveroo and Wise went public. Deliveroo has since been bought by DoorDash, and Wise moved its main listing to New York.

The International Finance Corporation, part of the World Bank Group, took a £67.2 million stake. U.K. retail investors were given 8 million shares through the platform Retail Book.

"Our listing in London marks an important new chapter for our business," chief executive Ian Ferrao said. He called it "a beginning, not a destination."

A banker at JP Morgan told City AM the deal would be a "checkpoint for the overall IPO market." The payments firm Zilch is also preparing a possible London listing.

Full, unconditional trading is due to start Oct. 14, The Independent reported.

What we know: the price, the size of the sale and the first-day dip.
What we don't: whether the shares will win a spot in the FTSE 100.