Orange Money to cut across networks

VALUE ADDED SERVICES

By John Churu, Gaborone, Botswana

As from the 24th of October, Orange Botswana’s newly-launched mobile phone-based financial service, Orange Money, will extend its money transfer and withdrawals facility to other networks outside of Orange. This is according to the Head of Orange Money, Moussa Dao.

Botswana has currently three mobile phone operators - Orange, Mascom and be-Mobile, which is a government-owned entity.

Initially, Orange subscribers were the only ones who able to use the facility, which allows them to deposit, withdraw or transfer money from their mobile to another mobile phone within the Orange network.

“From the 24th we will make it possible for our customers to transfer to non-Orange networks operating in this country,” said Dao. Since the launch of the product, there have been no security glitches and Orange hopes with the introduction of other networks in their system, the same smooth flow will prevail.

“Since June 2011, there have been no security glitches. We monitor the transactions daily and the system has inbuilt parameters so you can’t go beyond a certain limit. We are going to extend the same security standards to these other networks that we are roping in as well,” assured Dao.

Dao added that in due course, customers would be able to access the same facility in other countries, but he cautioned: “in the meantime we are studying the security details of the host countries as well.” Dao said Orange’s role was to make day-to-day life easier for as many people as possible.