Vodacom digital campaign targets individuals, merchants

TANZANIA : VODACOM Tanzania, through its M-Pesa service, has introduced a new digital campaign targeting individual customers and merchants to keep up with the advancement in digital economy.

The campaign dubbed ‘Maisha ni Kujiongeza na M-Pesa’ will also benefit money agents, vehicle owners and drivers as merchants from both new and improved products like ‘M-Pawa’, ‘Songesha’, ‘Wakala Songesha’ and ‘Wezesha Wakala’.

The M-Pesa Director Mr Epimack Mbeteni pointed out that for 15 years M-Pesa has been part of the country’s mobile money revolution playing a crucial role in bridging the financial gap inclusion.

“We have broadened our M-Pesa portfolio with both savings and lending products,” Mr Mbeteni said yesterday.

This includes the introduction of ‘Mgodi’, a financial service that allows M-Pesa customers to save and access mid-sized loans of up to 30 days.

“We are also introducing a special category of loans for vehicle owners and drivers which are ‘Chomoka’ and Insurance Premium Financing (IPF),” he said.

Through Chomoka drivers will now will be able to fuel up on credit at all filling stations across the country that have the ‘Lipa kwa Simu’ service while IPF will enable them complete payments for their insurance cover whether they don’t have the enough money or need the full premium amount.

Now, customers can take multiple loans, perform partial repayments, and take another loan until they reach their maximum limit through Songesha.

“As I speak, almost 400,000 first time customers can access this service,” he said.

The campaign has gone further to introduce business loans for M-Pesa registered merchants based on their transactional pool and customer base. These loans will help to boost their working capital and overall business operations.