Safaricom Counters Airtel Unliminet with Crazy Internet Offers

Safaricom limited is not going to stand and watch it's subscribers make a switch to rival Airtel with it's unliminernet offer. Safaricom has come up with crazy internet bundles offer to counter the rival's recent campaign. Ironically. both networks are using the same USSD code to *544# to on board subscribers. Currently Safaricom controls 70% of data market and that is just the way they want it to remain if not higher. Below is the new data structure for safaricom

DAILY BUNDLES

OFF-PEAK (10pm-6am)

SMS

Price

5MB

5MB

5SMS

5

12MB

12MB

12SMS

10

25MB

25MB

25SMS

20

50MB

50MB

50SMS

30

100MB

100MB

100SMS

40

WEEKLY BUNDLES

OFF-PEAK (10pm-6am)

SMS

Price

4MB

4MB

-

5

10MB

10MB

-

10

30MB

30MB

-

25

65MB

65MB

-

50

MONTHLY BUNDLES

OFF-PEAK(10pm-6am)

SMS

Price

100MB

100MB

-

100

300MB

300MB

-

250

650MB

650MB

-

500

2GB

2GB

-

1000

5GB

5GB

-

2000

10GB

10GB

-

3000

25GB

25GB

-

5750

50GB

50GB

-

6750

POWER BUNDLE/OFF-PEAK - 10PM - 6AM)

Barclays Partners with Twitter to offer Payments Solutions

If you live in the UK You will soon be able to make and receive payments to and from

your twitter buddies using pingit. The product is expected to be launched next month specifically on March 10th. This will be a first in terms of Social media innovations in the payments . To make payments one would have to log in to Pingit, Enter the twitter handle or select payee from a list, Complete the payment. With Britons regularly on their phones and more so on twitter, this product provides an easy, fast, efficient way of making payments without necessarily inputting your mobile number or bank account number. The patnership hopes to capture the 13 million plus twitter users in the UK. Pingit was launchedby Barclays in 2012 can be used to pay bills and donate to charity and has close to 4 million downloads and a billion pounds worth of transactions.

How to get your KCSE results on phone

The much awaited Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education, KCSE results for the 2014 examinations will be out next tuesday. As usual anxiety is getting to fever pitch as both students and parents await with bated breath to find out the examinations results. It is a digital world and they wont have to queue at school notice boards to know. All they will need to do is SMS their INDEX numbers to the short code 22252 and the results will be sent right to their phones.A total of 880,486 students sat last years KCSE exam. SMS technology bridges the digital divide in today's fast paced life where time is of essence and information is needed right at the palm of your hands. Sms costs are 25/- per sms

Airtel Seeks to have Safaricom declared dominant and split into three business units

After 18 years of existence in the Kenyan Market Safaricom Limited has continued to dominate other networks and has proved to be a market leader. Currently Safaricom controls 75.6% market share in Voice, 93% in sms, 70% data and 66.7% in mobile money. Now Airtel is seeking to have Safaricom declared dominant by the regulator, Communication Authority so that the playing ground can be easy. This in layman language means that Safaricom has become a colossus and the other networks namely Orange and Airtel would benefit if it was declared dominant. That means Safaricom would operate in a more restricted business environment and it may have to be split into three independent entities.

MPESA
This would become an independent company and subscribers from other networks would register without necessarily moving from their networks. Safaricom's strategy of introducing MPESA was a win for them in terms of locking in their subscribers.

Mobile phone Services
This would be set aside to cater for mobile phone sales and voice services, sms and data but again on a controlled pricing if the Communication Authority will declare Safaricom dominant.

Infrastructure

This would run the base stations and again provide services to other networks at a controlled wholesale price.It should be noted that  Safaricom has invested heavily on infrastructure to ensure that it's customers enjoy uninterrupted services. The other networks want to use this infrastructure to help in terminating calls to their subscribers.
 
Interesting facts on the three telcos leadership styles
Safaricom was started in 1997 as a private limited liability company and was converted into a public company with limited liability in May of 2002. It has had only two CEOs namely Michael Joseph who retired in November 2010 and was succeeded by Bob Collymore. The MPESA service was launched in 2007. Safaricom has never done any major rebranding.

Airtel has rebranded four times in the last 15 years. From Kencell, To Celtel to Zain and finally to Airtel and nine CEOs to boot.

Orange which was the pioneer phone service provider and which was caught flat footed by Safaricom rebranded from Telcom Kenya has had 6 CEOs in a decade and a half.

Yu which made an exit last year had had 4 CEOs before winding up shop apparently because they were not making profits.

Payoneer Card Offering Convenience In Payments

Payoneer Card has been making ripples among the Mastercards available in the Market. Started in 2005 and with a global reach of 200 countries worldwide the Card offers convenience for Merchants and individuals alike. The Payoneer Card is a prepaid debit card that can be used for online purchases, stores and ATMs where MasterCard is accepted. Holders of payoneer mastercard can get paid by a host of companies that are in patnership with payoneer. Users can receive the money into their account and withdraw via ATM . The charges for withdrawing can be as low as 1.2%.

If you want to start receiving payments via Payoneer you would need to sign in to your account and select Payoneer as your payment mode. You will then start getting your money straight into your Payoneer account whereby you can withdraw from your local bank, ATM or shop online. When withdrawing from the ATM you however need to be careful not to withdraw more than is in your account because you will be charged for the failed transaction.

From your Payoneer account dashboard you can receive payments, request USD payments send payments to another payoneer account holder or withdraw from bank.

Payoneer Card will definitely be an easy affordable payment option for online marketers outside of Europe and USA who receive payments from Affiliate marketing companies and Google. These people always endure  high commissions levied to their payments from other modes of receiving their hard earned cash.

Uber Enters Lucrative Kenyan Market

Kenya became the 6th African Country for the App-based Transport network and taxi company Uber to venture in. The company has its headquarters in San Fransisco and operates its services in many cities of the world. Nigeria and South Africa Preceded Kenya in Uber's Ventures.. Kenya is especially strategic due to its large population and more so the smart phone users.Uber is a smart phone application that connects drivers to passengers in a certain area. The service is convenient and all a passenger needs to do is have the Uber application in his phone, with the app one can locate the nearest driver and within ten minutes his or her transport will have been sorted.The app has a GPS based dispatch built into the software. The customer can select a convenient cashless payment mode. Alaster Curtis,  Uber  GM says that they are looking at introducing the service to other cities in Kenya apart from Nairobi and integrate M-pesa as a payment mode.

A similar service has been running in Kenya by the name Easy Taxi. Easy taxi user experience is great but the brand did not quite hit the market strongly

Equity Bank Fires Google as Battle for cashless transport Intensifies

Kenya's transport industry is ripe for cashless payments and the players are gearing off for a face-off. Bebapay which is powered by google wallet was the first to announce entry into the market. Bebapay is being operated by Equity bank, the biggest bank in Africa by customer base with eight million customers. The move to cashless has been a tag of war between commuters, Transport operators and the government. Initially Bebapay was just a card that could only enable customers to travel and get reports of bills via their phones, the bus conductor would use an android phone to complete the transaction via NFC. But now Equity is dropping the NFC powered card by Google and embracing EMV through  the new Equity prepaid Master card that will be able to compete with KCB  PEPEACARD . As the transport sector is getting ready to go fully cashless  the banks don't want to be left behind and want a piece of the pie in processing the transactions before they hit the merchants collection accounts. That leaves the my1963 card which is being operated by Safaricom,  Kenya's largest mobile network operator, and COOPERATIVE bank's M-Nauli card, both these cards are NFC enabled. Safaricom has twenty million subscribers and operates the market leader mobile money service, Safaricom is not about to let go of this opportunity in the transport industry, which is worth a whooping 200 billion shillings annually. Equity through Google sent its 700,000 Bebapay holders this message on February 14th. 'Dear customer, the Bebapay service will be discontinued on 15th March 2015. You can either replace your card with the new Equity prepaid MasterCard for free, finish your card balance by March 15th or get a refund by March 28'

there has been a massive activation drive by both Equity and KCB to get as many customers as possible to use their cards. The National Transport and Safety Authority had announced last week as the deadline for Cash transport. However , most of the cards transactions failed and the deadline was pushed to a later date.