Vodacom South Africa and BlackBerry have announced today that customers can now pay for BlackBerry Apps using their prepaid credit balance or through their contract account. The new method of payment also applies to in-app purchases.
South Africa has more than 5 Million active Blackberry handsets with the number growing every year.
Given that not everyone in Africa has a PayPal account or owns a credit card, hence the popularity of mobile payment services, this move will likely increase the spending from South Africa on the Blackberry App World.
Bob Bose, Regional Managing Director at RIM explains: “By working closely with Vodacom, we are able to offer customers easier access to tens of thousands of apps ranging from productivity to entertainment.”
Also, the new alternative method of payment will assist Vodacom in getting more customers to spend on data related services as all Mobile operators look to generate more revenue out of data services.
Vodacom’s Prins Mhlanga – Managing Executive of Vodacom Digital Media – elaborated “We have worked closely with RIM to make this functionality available for our BlackBerry smartphone customers. Once again, Vodacom is improving the customer experience by unlocking the power of its network and services.”
Blackberry accounts for more than 50 percent of the active smartphones in South Africa, despite a constant threat from Android smartphones and their financial woes as recently reported.
Should this form of payment be used in other parts of Africa by Blackberry, e.g. Nigeria where Blackberry is popular, they could see significant growth in spending on apps and in-app purchases.
