Safaricom Customers Redeem Over 1 Billion Bonga Points Tokens within 2 Months as Firm Moves to Make Token Redemption Permanent

Over 1 billion Safaricom Bonga Points tokens have been redeemed, worth about $3.1 million within a period of two months.

Safaricom, the largest telecom in Kenya and the region, initiated a campaign to enable business outlets adopt and accept its Bonga Points digital tokens, as payment for goods and services.

SEE ALSOSafaricom Bonga Points – A Case for a New Digital Currency in Kenya?

Over 40, 000 M-PESA merchant outlets accepted these tokens for payment over the two months promotional period which ended on June 4, 2020.

At the same time, over $1.4 million worth of the digital tokens was transferred from one person to another before being redeemed.

More than 600, 000 customers redeemed the digital tokens at various merchant outlets across the country. The transaction cost was KES 20 cents per point.

Since its inception in 2007, customers accumulate a point for every KES 10 spent on services on the Safaricom network.

As mentioned in our last post, Bonga Points is essentially a digital currency in Kenya backed with real-world value as it enables the token to be redeemed for real-world assets under the M-PESA system.

As predicted, the success of this ‘experiment’ has led to Safaricom making redemption of Bonga Points at Lipa Na M-PESA merchants a permanent feature of the loyalty scheme. There is no doubt that this move will further drive its digital token agenda and possibly entrench this payment method even deeper in the future.

 

 

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