Approximately 250,000 Safaricom customers have purchased handsets on loan, with daily repayments as low as Sh20, helping the telco’s efforts to increase data revenues.
According to the telco, the phones were purchased between July 28 last year and the end of March, implying an average of 1,016 clients every day.
In July, the telco announced the ‘Lipa Mdogo Mdogo’ device financing programme, which allows customers who still use feature phones to upgrade to a 4G-enabled phone.
“Through Lipa Mdogo Mdogo, 250,000 customers made use of the offer, with over 60 percent upgrading from 2G and 3G to 4G devices. This represents a growth of 39.8 percent year-on-year in 4G devices and will have been partially responsible for the 31.1 percent growth in data customers using more than 1GB” Safaricom said.
By transferring more consumers to faster Internet speeds, the telco hopes to boost its data business. Safaricom uses data analytics to build personalised credit scores for its consumers, which aids the company in determining who is eligible for phone financing.
