Last year, a report showed that Mobile Money transactions were half of Uganda’s GDP. With this exponential growth of the mobile money sector, many businesses are jumping on to seize a share of the huge profits. Most of these businesses offer Point of sale services to help hundreds of customers to speed through the checkout line.
Mobile Money has changed the business model of traditional banks too. Many top banks have incorporated the service in their operations to remain relevant in the modern market. For instance, Housing Finance Bank allows its customers to withdraw money from their accounts via mobile money.
MTN Uganda has half of all the Mobile Money customers to its name, making its MoMo service the largest in Uganda. With such huge numbers in Uganda, and across Africa, MTN set to roll out MoMo ATM machines. MTN’s Mobile Money is active in 14 markets with over 22 million customers and about 4,600 transactions per minute.
Tecno bringing competition to MTN Mobile Money and Airtel Money.
It’s very natural to be tempted by such impressive figures. Who would want to miss out on the good stuff? Consequently, Transsion Holdings, the parent company for Tecno, Infinix and Itel has been seduced by the numbers. The company has decided to venture into the Mobile Money business.
According to Techweez, Transsion through a joint venture NetEase is preparing to launch a service dubbed PalmPay. This will be under a newly registered company, Transsnet Payment Limited. Transsnet describe themselves as a company that develops financial services for the mobile generation in Africa. The goal of the new company is to reach 100 million users within the next 3 years.
PalmPay features.
Reports show that PalmPay will offer mobile loans, as well as being a payments platform. It will allow users to send money to each other, pay bills and buy airtime. This is similar to platforms like Cellulant, XMM, and many others which however, don’t offer loans.
PalmPay will also incorporate PalmPoints, a sort of loyalty program where customers are rewarded for using the service. This looks to keep customers engaged and keep their eyes shut to the sea of other mobile money solutions.
Transsion currently enjoys the largest share of the African smartphone market. Consequently, the company might capitalize on this position to push PalmPay to consumers. This could be through including its service as a pre-installed application on their devices. They might be betting on human curiosity to have the pre-installed service tried and maybe, retain them.
With the mobile money market gaining new players everyday, PalmPay may not have an easy ride. However, Transsion might get a good break through if they decide to include PalmPay as a pre-installed app.
PalmPay will likely launch in Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania before taking root in other African markets. However, with the Mobile Money tax in Uganda, we might not see the service as soon as other African nations.
