Don’t just tell someone, tell EVERYONE! NetOne is making moves to broaden the reach of its mobile money service. According to a newly flighted advert TelOne is now a OneWallet money agent with 34 TelOne outlets across the country listed as agents!
This hardly comes as a surprise though.One wonders why this arrangement hadn’t existed already. It’s just a case of banding together with a parastatal kinsman, a strategy that has helped boost NetOne’s agents total to 1,100. This is by the way the same Members-Only “Power-Pack” authorised to sell ZESA prepaid electricity. This is a major part of the NetOne OneWallet growth strategy.
NetOne is giving t-shirts (applause!) to the first 10 customers to use these TelOne outlets to transact or “OneWallet” their money (does that even work as a verb though? “EcoCashing” wouldn’t be appropriate either).
I’m not sure how much of an incentive that will be though. I would have expected sweeter offers from a service trying to leap from 200,000 active subscribers and hit a 750,000 subscriber target. These guys say they go “further and higher” but newbies like TeleCash seem to be doing a better job at that and now sit on a subscriber base and agent network thrice their size in half a year.
Mobile money platforms are only as good as the convenience that they offer to a subscriber. This translates to basics like accessibility (hence the race for agents), payment options (queue the case of ZESA prepaid electricity), ease of use(switching my SIM card is so inconvenient) and competitive tariffs.
NetOne has slam-dunked certain aspects here with competitive tariffs and a cornered market with a vital service like ZESA but there’s more involved to coming out ahead in the local m-commerce jungle. I am sure these guys can do something better than 10 t-shirts for each of these 34 outlets.
The jury is still out on how new services like Nettcash have been fairing in their first months of existence but NetOne has to do a lot more to ensure that someone else doesn’t go further and higher than them. After all, we expect a lot from Zimbabwe’s pioneer mobile telecoms provider.
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