Yakako is a singular verb meaning “You shine” in the local Luganda dialect. On the other side of the spectrum, it is a Ugandan bred service that will enable pre-paid Umeme Yaka users to be able to borrow more units to power their homes and businesses using mobile money. Extension of the service to Post-Paid Umeme customers is in coming soon mode.
Future plans of extending the service to bank account holders are ongoing.The service will be used over mobile or across the web regardless of whatever phone one is holding. Smartphone users will be provided for with an app while feature phone users will opt for USSD codes.
For Yakako to extend the service to any prospective customer, they will assess one’s credit worth depending on the volume of transactions committed on one’s mobile money or bank account, akin to Mokash that employs a similar measure. This will determine how many units the prospective customer qualifies for. Customers then pay back the next time they top up their mobile money, bank accounts or when they use aggregators like Pay way, Ezee Money, New Pay among others to pay for Yaka.
Yakako is currently in a prototype phase with measures to conduct pilot studies and with possibilities of extending it to other utility services like Water and probably PayTV or Internet services as is the case with payment aggregators.
Yakako wishes to partner with businesses both from the public and private sectors about extending this service to their respective employees, Mobile Network Operators in order to leverage their networks and large install base, Aggregators to leverage their POS terminals, and distribution centers and Banks to offer the service to their account holders.
