Netone’s mobile money platform, OneMoney registered 1 680 customers yesterday alone with thousands more expected by day end as customers scrambled to capitalize on the mobile money services free-charge promotion which the company announced last week.
Customers are registering for OneMoney merchant, biller and agent lines which are expected to provide transacting alternatives for the public following system failure on the country’s leading mobile money platform, Ecocash.
“We started this massive registration yesterday and as of end of yesterday we had registered 1 680 in total just in one day and today the figure is actually bigger,” NetOne’ s acting chief Mobile Financial Services officer Mhonda Sibanda told 263Chat Business.
“We are registering agents, merchants, billers and what we call “OnePay”, which is our bulk disbursement platform used in settlement of salaries for companies and where other bulk disbursements can be processed,” he added.
When this publication visited NetOne Head Offices this morning, hundreds of customers were queuing inside for the registration process with the majority of clients being sole traders mainly operating in the informal economy.
“This opportunity will also help us issue more NetOne lines so that our billers, agents and merchants conduct their businesses on our NetOne platform. Our customers have been complaining that we are not visible but after this we are going to make our brand more visible,” Sibanda said.
Early this week NetOne announced that it was embarking on a zero rated transaction promotion on all OneMoney transactions, a strategy that has raised interest from customers already reeling from high cost of electronic transactions.
“We’ve introduced zero rated transactions on all OneMoney transactions except the statutory 2 percent tax and card swiping charges. This means that when you send money, there’s no fees; when you receive money there’re no fees; when you purchase airtime, there’ no fees; when you cash-out, there’re no fees; and when you buy at the shop using the merchant code, there’re no fees,” NetOne CEO, Lazarus Muchenje told press this week.
Intermittent service delivery on the Ecocash platform has affected business activity in the economy during the past two weeks hence creating a window of opportunity for other mobile money platforms.
Currently, NetOne commands 4.7 percent market share on mobile money services only second from Ecocash’s 94.5 percent but the development is likely to charge OneMoney’ stake upwards.
Already, NetOne were the biggest winners in the latest Postal Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ) second quarter Report, moving up 0.9 percent market share, while Econet and Telecel fell by 0.3 percent and 0.6 percent respectively.
