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FNB joins Mxit's money scheme

Staff Writer
By Staff Writer, ITWeb
Johannesburg, 02 Oct 2012

Big four bank First National Bank (FNB) has further entrenched its social media presence with a partnership involving Africa's largest social network, Mxit.

Mxit announced this morning it has integrated FNB's eWallet service into its mobile commerce platform, Mxit Moola - creating "FNB Moola+".

According to Mxit, FNB Moola+ enables users of its network to buy Moola (Mxit's online currency) at discounted rates. "The result is 35% bonus Moola for every rand spent compared to buying it via premium-rated SMS."

FNB eWallet allows South African cellphone users to perform various financial transactions. Yolande van Wyk, CEO of FNB eWallet Solutions, says eWallet is continually extending its functionality. "With the integration into Mxit, we are taking advantage of the micropayment potential of Mxit Moola."

Mxit CEO, Alan Knott-Craig Jnr, says the latest partnership gives the social network's 10 million-strong base another banking service with which to transact. He says Moola is a critical piece of the micropayment puzzle. "As Mxit's platform strategy matures, there will be more opportunities to interact with applications, games and content, and this will be done using our online currency."

Knott-Craig says one of the greatest challenges to mobile commerce is cost-effectively getting money into the system. "Traditionally the only way to get real money into our ecosystem was to use premium-rated SMS services. This is an expensive solution and puts a lot of pressure on Mxit to provide fair value to the user while still recouping its costs."

The partnership with FNB, he says, will have a positive knock-on effect into Mxit's partner network. "The more Moola our users have to spend, the better for each developer of the various games and services."

To activate the service, Mxit users need to add "fnbmoola" as a contact and then link their existing FNB eWallet to Mxit by following on-screen instructions. They then use FNB Moola+ to buy Mxit Moola and will automatically receive their bonus Moola.

Money can be loaded from any FNB account (except credit cards) via cellphone banking, online banking, the FNB banking app and FNB ATMs.

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