WeChat South Africa made the announcement that they had rolled out WeChat Wallet. This is a mobile money that offers peer-to-peer money transfers, ability to pay at retailing shops, ability to purchase prepaid airtime and electricity among others. According to Brett Loubser, WeChat SA head, the mobile wallet service has been in the market for quite some time and therefore it is just a copy-and-paste of the mobile platforms that offers similar service to other markets like Chinese case.
Brett pinned out that the success of WeChat in South Africa to date has been as a result of their ability to identify the local market’s needs. He also cited micro-jobbing service M4Jam and radio station CliffCentral as the two best examples of this transformation.
Driving Transactions:
Brett pinpointed that WeChat mobile market offerings are driven by transactions rather than marketing. For example, in some markets like China, such transactions are driven by mainly by micro-transactions in the mobile games. This is a sector that makes up the largest part of the revenue of WeChat. Although this kind of market hasn’t taken up the African and SA market, mobile market is used by a huge amount of people in the country and continent at large. Brett pointed out that Africa is leading way-forward in the mobile money industry compared to other parts of the world.
Cashing In and Cash Out:
As per Brett, among the critical features of the mobile wallet is its ability to cash money out at retailers and ATMs. Users can easily cash money out and in via Instant Money vouches at the Standard Bank ATMs and other participating retailers like Choppies Stores, Rhino, Cambridge, and SPAR. With the inclusion of the SnapScan integration, it is vital as it provides it with an opening into SA’s rapidly growing online to offline retail space without necessarily asking users who use SnapScan to sell their services and goods to a different platform.
This service also provides a great access to the e-commerce space. A very large number, which is still growing, of South African sites are offering SnapScan as an option for payment. With WeChat mobile wallet, you will be able to pay bills and buy prepaid services like airtime, electricity, and send money. Brett added that to ensure security, they partnered with the Standard Charted Bank when building the mobile wallet.