LAGOS —Determined to check scarcity of its recharge cards in the past weeks, MTN has introduced a virtual recharge option, which would enable subscribers recharge their phones without the use of physical cards.
Vmobile Nigeria, another GSM operator announced reduction in cost of its lines to N5,500, and introduced three new tariffs and two promotions on Veego, its pre-paid product. The promotions are Bumpa Card, The Big One and Veego Airtime Bonus Offer.
Introducing the Virtual Top Up service yesterday, MTN’s Chief Marketing Officer, Afam Edozie said it is one of the innovative services for which MTN is known. Virtual Top Up is provided by MTN in partnership with a Nigerian company, Nigerian Electronic Funds Transfer Operations, NEFTO, which is responsible for running the service.
He said that MTN has the greatest reach in Nigeria having expanded its services to 33 of the 36 states of the federation and offer service in more than 5,000 communities around the country. Edozie said that given the reach of the services of MTN, the company deemed it fit to introduce the Virtual Airtime service to alleviate the problems of people who do not have ready access to MTN recharge cards in remote locations across the country.
With MTN’s Virtual Top Up, all the subscriber has to do is to request a recharge value that he wants from a vendor, supply the vendor his mobile phone number and within a few seconds, he gets an SMS confirming that his account has been topped up. He can then crosscheck his balance to confirm.
For the recharge vendor, all he needs is a special SIM which enables him/her to transfer the Naira value of pre-paid airtime (in existing MTN denominations) from a virtual vending account in the MTN VTU Master System, directly and instantly to a subscriber’s pre-paid account.
Vmobile’s new Bumpa Card, with a cyclic life span of 30 days only, is offered at N3,000 each. When used with recharge cards, it will reduce the tariff to a flat rate of N22 per minute for all calls to destinations within Nigeria.
The Big One is a N20, 000 recharge card for Veego subscribers. The card comes with free N2,000 or 10% extra airtime and offers 360 days validity period.
The Veego Airtime Bonus Offer offers subscribers who use up to N50, 000 or more airtime in any month will get 10% of whatever they spend as free airtime at the end of the particular month. This is a lifetime offer. It also commenced on June 1, 2004.
MTN recharge cards come in denominations of N750, N1,500, N3,000 and N6,000. While the N750 card gives five days access on the network, the others give 15 days, 30 days and 60 days access respectively.
The MTN VTU system is protected from unauthorized airtime by authenticators thereby minimizing the risk associated with the physical distribution of recharge cards.
It is also convenient for both the vendors and the subscribers, environmental friendly and is capable of promotes entrepreneurial skills of Nigerians, says Afam Edozie.
In the past two weeks, MTN recharge cards have suddenly gone off the streets, driving up the cost of the cards in the process. As at yesterday, MTN recharge card of the N750 denomination went for N850, while that of N1,500 went for N1,800.
Calixtus Okoruwa, MTN's Public Relations Manager, had explained that the cards went off the streets as a result of some logistics problems.
Only last March, the Federal government gave telecom operators a deadline of January 2004 to stop the importation of Recharge Cards into the country. The initiative was to get local production of recharge cards and save the country some Foreign Exchange.
