Clickatell, a global leader in mobile messaging and transaction service provision, has been honored with a Kalahari Mobile Money award for its contribution to the digital financial services sector through Virtual Top Up (VTU).
The award celebrates creativity, commitment and excellence in the mobile financial services across Africa while honouring best practice in the sector, which covers mobile network operators, card services, financial institutions, and independent providers in the ecosystem in Africa and beyond.
The Clickatell VTU product is the underlying technology powering successful airtime top-up services such as GTBank’s 737 1-Click Top-Up and Access Bank’s 901 Top-Up services in Nigeria.
The product has enabled these banks to offer their customers a far more convenient way of purchasing airtime than purchasing traditional printed airtime vouchers.
Using this USSD based service, banking customers can purchase virtual airtime via their mobile phones.
Reiterating the reason for the honour,Emmanuel Okogwale, Mobile Money Africa Principal, noted that Clickatell has successfully collaborated with several banks in Nigeria to offer VTU as a service, and that this has encouraged the country’s push for a cashless society.
The service has also been adopted by Sterling Bank, Eco Bank and StanbicIBTC among others.
Samson Isa, Clickatell West Africa Director said the award has shown that the market recognized the company’s efforts at providing cutting-edge technology to make consumers’ lives more convenient.
“VTU is a mobile prepaid technology product that has revolutionized the telecoms distribution space because of its ease of usage, security and availability,” Isa said.
Notable among the banks that have benefitted from the deployment of VTU is GTBank, which through Clickatell now offers USSD, Internet Banking, Mobile Banking andMobile Money services on the platform.
Prepaid airtime is a critical success factor to mobile banking and mobile money’s success in Nigeria. VTU is a convenient service for bank customers who wish to purchase airtime anytime for themselves or others.
According to Isa, commercial banks, in collaboration with Clickatell, offer a broader array of VTU prepaid products including data.
By providing MNOs access to bank customers, Clickatell operates as the bridge between the banks and the consumers, enabling them to enjoy banking services in a secure way.
Recipients of the Kalahari Awards are chosen by an independent panel of expert judges based on a number of criteria, include geographic market penetration, based on evidence of commercial campaigns, regulatory compliance, and where necessary, cross sector partnerships, active deployments and future growth potential.
Clickatell enables more than 15,000 clients across a range of industries to communicate, interact and transact with their customers around the world via mobile phone.
It is a global leader in mobile messaging, and partner with MNOs in launching and promoting market-tailored products and value added services.
Clickatell has longstanding partnerships with over 1,000 mobile network operators in 224 countries and territories, and have a track record of success spanning 15 years in both developing and first world markets.
On the other hand, the Kalahari Awards are given to organizations that have made significant contribution to the digital financial services sector and are poised to make considerable market impact in the future.
The awards will be decided by an independent panel of expert judges based on a number of criteria including: Geographic market penetration, evidence of commercial campaigns, regulatory compliance where necessary, cross sector partnerships, active deployments and future growth potential.
The Kalahari awards are dedicated to acknowledging creativity, commitment and excellence in the mobile financial services across Africa.
The Kalahari awards honour best of the breed across all sectors and segments of digital financial services covering mobile network operators, card services, financial institutions, independent providers, systems and application providers, regulators, international development agencies, micro finance organizations and individuals in the ecosystem in Africa and beyond.