Nearing 1 million subs, OneMoney slashes airtime discount to 10%

The one thing that I thought OneMoney had going for it was the 20% discount for NetOne airtime purchases. This offer was very enticing and was one of the reasons why I opened a OneMoney wallet. In what I think is a strange turn of events OneMoney has reduced the airtime discount offer from 20% to 10%.

OneMoney inches closer to 1 million subscribers

In POTRAZ’s sector performance report for Q4 2020, OneMoney was the biggest mover with a 9.6% increase in subscriptions from Q3 2020. OneMoney was able to add just under 100 000 new subscribers to record 936 479 in Q4 2020. The nation’s second-largest mobile money operator has been able to boost its number because of two key events/reasons.

The first is that OneMoney has grown increasingly popular with money changers. When the hammer was being down on EcoCash last year, money changers reportedly made OneMoney their back up mobile money wallet.

The second reason is, of course, the directive the RBZ issued that banned multiple mobile money wallets on one MMO (mobile money operator). If you were accustomed to having two EcoCash wallets then you had to find an alternative and the next best is OneMoney.

As a result of these two factors and some others, OneMoney has been steadily making strides to reaching the 1 million mark.

OneMoney subscriber numbers in 2020

	Q4 2019	Q1 2020	Q2 2020	Q3 2020	Q4 2020
Active Subscriptions	468 960	555 255	892 963	854 320	936 479

Why has OneMoney halved the airtime discount when 1 million is so close?

OneMoney may have missed out on an opportunity to make up even more ground to EcoCash. They could have marketed the 20% discount heavily and announced that they were nearing the 1 million mark. In a similar fashion to the GigaThanks Promotion, OneMoney could have run a number of other parallel promotions to boost the surge to 1 million.

More importantly OneMoney could have started putting a significant dent in EcoCash’s dominance when it comes to value and number of mobile money transactions. In Q4 2020, EcoCash comfortably commanded

• Over 84% of mobile money market
• 97.98% of mobile money transaction volumes
• 95.79% of the value of mobile transactions

That being said, OneMoney has been ever so slowly eating away at EcoCash’s lead. But the margins are very very small.

At any rate, OneMoney will hit 1 million sometime this quarter (if it hasn’t already). And 10% is better than 0%, but halving the promotion as OneMoney approaches a major milestone is, in my opinion, not a very good look.