BY NDUMBE BELL JOSEPH GASTON IN DOUALA
Reputed mobile telephony MTN Cameroon has expressed overwhelming gratitude to their millions of patronisers for their enormous contributions made to drive the company to the top of the telecom service echelon in Cameroun and for enabling them occupy 55 percent share of their sector.
The pronouncements were made in a press conference organised at their headquarter precincts in Douala recently among a cross-section of the press, officials and workers of the organisation where presentations were made in covering statistics that demonstrated the irreversible support since their inception in Cameroon and during North West, South West crisis and also the pandemic and post-pandemic eras, remarked Mr Tamba.
In his introduction, Mr Tamba hinted that the agenda of the day was hinged on three pillars being the performance of an African application called “Ayoba”, the payment platform performance and the overall performance, to be presented by three senior officials.
Mr Riad Mezi (Chief Marketing Officer) declared that among the three figures three records, the African digital platform Ayoba has a customer base today of two million, one hundred thousand. He detailed that “ayoba” is ten times more valuable than WhatsApp. He argued that “ayoba” can be used for free without any worries to spend to have airtime, data or message bundles. The main reason for this free service is to strengthen fidelity between the user experience and the company. Ayoba is said to be used for sharing, kitchen and health tips, games, messages, music down loads, calls and other contents-all these for free.
Mr Alain Claude Nono, who is the General Manager of Mobile Money Corporation reported that aside from being certified among the most secured systems in CEMAC against money laundering, since its inception twelve (12) years ago, MoMo performance has increased to a record five (5) million subscribers monthly, an incredible hike from 250 customers when they started.
They also have 55 percent of the market in Cameroon today.
According to Mr Akam Melvin who is the General Manager Regulatory and Corporate Affairs, MTN Cameroon is tinkering with twelve (12) million patronisers, almost the population of Gabon, Equatorial Guinee Republic and of Chad. Akam called this an uncontested and incontestable trend.
The performance records survived all checks and clarification questions from the press. The MTN key speakers defended the recent hike of charges on transfers arguing that when you compare the benefits of customer experience in getting things done rapidly and time-saving experiences in the payment of health, electricity and other bills in rural and urban areas, those charges are negligible. They were also supportive of contributing to dematerialisation.
In a press briefing granted by all, the CEO MTN MoMo Corporation Alain Nono announced 30 days of grace starting now, where money transfers to the neighbourhood of FCFA 1 million would attract charges of only FCFA 250 and others. A collection of prizes were won through random logic.