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Vodacom plans to phase out its “My Vodacom” smartphone app in favour of its VodaPay “super app” in the coming months. The decision, according to group CEO Shameel Joosub, was taken to create a single interface through which consumers can interact with Vodacom and its services and those of its business partners. “We will ‘sunset’ the Vodacom app and there will be only one app,” Joosub said in an interview with TechCentral on Monday following publication of the group’s interim results for the six months ended 30 September 2023. On the merchant side, we are sitting on 10 000 merchants with our point-of-sale devices The Vodacom suite of telecommunications services available in My Vodacom is already baked into the VodaPay app, with new subscribers to be directed to use VodaPay rather than My Vodacom at sign-up. Existing My Vodacom customers will be encouraged to move to VodaPay from early next year. The My Vodacom app has about four million users. Joosub again said Vodacom has no plans to relaunch M-Pesa – the highly successful mobile money platform pioneered in Kenya by Vodacom affiliate Safaricom – in South Africa. Rather, VodaPay will offer many of the services available on M-Pesa in Kenya, Tanzania and other markets where it’s been launched. “We have VodaPay, which aims to do similar stuff [to M-Pesa]. The cash-in and cash-out element won’t be as big in South Africa, where we have taken a slightly different twist [to mobile financial services],” Joosub said. Read: Vodacom interim profit hit by Ethiopia start-up losses “On the merchant side, we are sitting on 10 000 merchants with our point-of-sale devices. The business is scaling quite nicely with over 60% year-on-year growth.” – © 2023 NewsCentral Media Get breaking news alerts from TechCentral on WhatsApp
