Technology service provider, Clickatell, honoured with Kalahari award

A global leader in mobile messaging and transaction service provision, Clickatell, 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 simply by dialing *737*AMOUNT#, in the case of GTBank.

Reiterating the reason for the honour, Mobile Money Africa Principal Emmanuel Okogwale 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.

Clickatell West Africa Director Samson Isa 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.”

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.