By Kefiloe Kajane
Local financial company VCL Financial Services this week launched a new application ‘My Mpesa App’ which is meant to give customers who use smart phones advanced Mpesa services.
VCL Financial Services managing director Palesa Mphunyetsane says the Mpesa App will be available to Android users as the company realised that most of its customers are smartphone and android users.
Mphunyetsane said the company came up with the App because “when customers were using USSD *111#, and got one digit wrong, they had to start all over. This has led to the establishment of the service as an improvement to the quality of services offered by the company.
“Also this App is going to decrease the chances of money being lost to a different number when sending Mpesa. With time, we will introduce the App to other users like IPhone but for now it is only available for Android users. We are also planning to introduce all the services that are found on Mpesa SSD on the App with time,” Mphunyetsane said.
Adding to what Mphunyetsane said, VCL Financial Services commercial manager Malatola Phothane said the App can be found on the Google Play Store. He said customers downloading the App should make sure that they search ‘My Mpesa App Lesotho’. He indicated that to download the App a customer will only need 8 megabytes but when the App is installed, a customer can access services on it without data.
“Currently not all the services of Mpesa are there on the App. For now, customers can withdraw money, send, pay bills as well as pay merchandise. Customers who will be able to use the App are those who have Mpesa account and they will login on the App with their Mpesa credentials.
“After the first activation of the App, a customer can be able to use the App even when they do not have VCL sim card but as long as they have to login in before to confirm that they are the owner of the account,” he explained.
This comes less than two months after Vodacom Lesotho announced that its M-Pesa division will now operate under a newly set up independent company known as VCL Financial Services.
Authorised by the Central Bank of Lesotho, the entity will be a licensed financial services provider, fully owned by Vodacom Lesotho. Launched in 2013, M-Pesa has grown from only 1,900 registered customers to over one million, with monthly transaction values surpassing M1-billion.
