Kenya’s Mobile Decisioning (MoDe), an emergency prepaid airtime startup, has announced plans to expand across Europe and South America.
Launched nearly two years back, the nano credit firm has grown significantly winning partnerships with Africa’s major telcos such as MTN and Airtel. MoDe has been made available in five African countries and says plans are underway to reach15 additional African nations soon.
The startup currently provides users small loans of up to US$20 in airtime value. MoDe group commercial director Josphat Kinyua recently told ITWeb Africa that the company has breached the 205 million transaction count, which has given them them confidence to approach the global market.
This achievement is a beacon of hope for technological expansions from Africa to the globe. According to some reports, there is a great concern among experts that African startups struggle to translate their continental success to the global stage.
Kinyua is positive that MoDe’s vision is a worldwide, rather than continent-based business initiative.
“The solution is not only African, its anyplace globally – everyone needs some help at some point in time, there’s always a time when you need that bail out even if it is for a small amount, that’s where we think the world is going,” he said.
Merlin Stone, an independent analyst, said earlier this year that Safaricom’s M-Pesa and other mobile money transfer systems (MMT’s) “are not the gold mines they were portrayed to be, but they serve as useful tools to attract and keep customers,” reported ITWeb Africa.
He motivated his statement by the continent’s statistics that show only Kenya has experienced popularity because of Safaricom’s 40 percent market share of the country’s mobile phone market.
MoDe was recently awarded the IBM Africa SmartCamp award in the Cape Town and will progress to the international round in Sao Paulo in December for the IBM’s Global Entrepreneurs of the Year competition, according to an earlier report by HumanIPO.
