Selcom Huduma App: Now anyone with a smartphone can be a Selcom Agent and Merchant
The app will enable anyone with a smartphone to become a Selcom agent and merchant in Tanzania to make assisted bill payments, Government and utility payments, sell airtime and insurance, and collect insurance premium payments while making a sizable commission income. The app also packs the popular Selcom Pay/Mastercard QR merchant payment solution allowing agents to collect payments for goods and services offered at their place of business, with instant access to their collections to pay suppliers in real-time, free of cost, into any mobile wallet or bank account.
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: Selcom, Tanzania’s largest assisted payments network provider, has relaunched its Selcom Huduma mobile app as an alternative to its widely available point-of-sale (POS) device which has been serving millions of customers under the Selcom Paypoint brand for over a decade.
The redesigned app will allow both agents and merchants to offer the full complement of transactions already available on the POS device while removing the barrier to entry for agents who want to earn a side income by serving cash customers.
Selcom Huduma, was launched in 2009 to facilitate bill, utility and airtime payments, LUKU and DAWASCO being marquee offerings at the time. Since then, the portfolio of services has rapidly expanded to agency banking, insurance, airtime, internet and television subscription, solar, Government payments (including the recently launched TARURA electronic parking payment service) and betting cash-in/cash-out, amongst many other services that serve the cash customer who wants to avoid transaction fees charges by banks and mobile wallets.
The app doubles as a means to accept and manage payments made by customers who use Selcom Pay/Mastercard QR by allowing merchants to access the funds immediately with no extra charges to pay suppliers into their mobile wallet or bank accounts.
Agents and merchants can simply download the Selcom Huduma app from the Apple or Android app stores to register themselves to start transacting and making money immediately. Selcom float is available from any NMB, NBC, CRDB, TCB or Akiba Bank branches or Selcom Huduma+ super agents countrywide with no deposit charges.
Why the app?
Latest stats from the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) indicate that the number of mobile internet subscribers stood at over 27 million at the end of September last year. This shows that the internet penetration and mobile users are growing exponentially and so is the demand for assisted services via the app.
While the Selcom Huduma POS targets businessmen and entrepreneurs, the app will additionally tap into the individual user, passive agent and studentpreneur space who can use the app as a means to pay their own payments or of those that surround them while making an income.
“We want to add more agents and merchants to our base, and the most logical way to accelerate this is to allow users to utilize the equipment that’s already in their pockets - their smartphone. The learning curve on mobile apps is significantly flatter for new users, as is the barrier to entry. It also makes the decision by advanced users to transition to a POS device an informed one. Further, with the strides we are making with our partner banks, and agent and merchant data, we will soon be in a position to introduce access to business loans, therefore, the more active an agent/merchant is, the more they can borrow.”
This does not spell the end of the Selcom POS; Selcom has been actively upgrading the device fleet with newer Android devices that are more relevant for the new services we are constantly adding to our offering, and with the increased issuance of scheme cards by banks, we will soon enable our POS devices to accept card payments at extremely competitive acquiring charges, further pushing our agenda to make digital payments mainstream.
This recent addition to Selcom’s suite of services is expected to increase the level of participation of micro-businesses in the financial sector, allowing for those in the rural areas to provide the services in remote areas where banks and other financial service providers cannot easily reach. The activity is also expected to create more employment opportunities to those on the fringes, especially youth and women in both rural and urban settings, this being in alignment with the need for technology to provide solutions to how we do things.
About Selcom:
Selcom is a Pan African cross-segment financial and payment services provider, providing its customers across Sub-Saharan Africa, with a full range of electronic payment products and services focusing on digital, card and card-less processing services. Selcom Huduma, initially under the Selcom Paypoint brand, was founded in 2009 to facilitate bill payments and other transactions in Tanzania. The service is now being used by over 50,000 agents and 75,000 merchants, nationwide.