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SA WhatsApp competitor Moya evolves into super app

Sibahle Malinga
By Sibahle Malinga, ITWeb senior news journalist.
Johannesburg, 26 Jan 2022

Data-free messaging app Moya Messenger has introduced the MoyaPayD Business Portal, a commerce feature that allows companies to send and receive money within its super app, Moya.

Introduced in 2018 by local technology firm Datafree, the local WhatsApp competitor enables users to communicate without incurring data costs. 

The app offers unlimited texting, group chat, end-to-end security with automatic encryption of messages and automatic contact discovery, which allows users to connect with others within the Moya app.

The company has built Moya off the back of its reverse billing platform, ensuring that users don’t use their own mobile data to access the platform, even if they have a zero airtime balance.

According to Datafree, since its debut, the Moya app has grown significantly, garnering more than 6.5 million monthly active users in SA.

The new portal allows small businesses and enterprises to register on the app,engage with the millions of active Moya users, and send or receive money from any bank account,directly from the chat section of the Moya app.

Businesses are able to accept payments from Mastercard, First National Bank Pay, RMB Pay, Capitec, Nedbank, Absa, Standard Bank and VodaPay.

Last year, the messaging platform introduced MoyaPayD, a payment platform built into the Moya app, allowing individual users to create a digital wallet, and accept and make payments with no fees between MoyaPayD accounts.

The MoyaPayD Business Portal is an extension of this service, allowing payments between the user and the business, or business-to-business transactions.

Moya began as a messaging app but has evolved to include features such as a marketplace, news service, the digital wallet and now the business payment portal.

“When we launched MoyaPayD last year, we built it with the aim of bringing a way for mainstream South Africans to build their own business portfolios, both online and in physical locations,” says Datafree CEO Gour Lentell.

“With the MoyaPayD Business Portal, we have placed a strong focus on building a central platform, where businesses can now manage their entire financial presence from a single place. For businesses this means that instant sales are possible, and they don’t have to send a customer to another online portal to make a sale.”

A super app, also described as a digital mall, is a mobile application that provides umbrella services – a trend which has gained momentum in the past year, accelerated by more people taking to online channels as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The app signs up between 500 and 1 000 consumer accounts on MoyaPayD every day, which provides businesses with a growing number of people to service, adds Lentell.

He says the payment platform also allows for offline payments by making use of a QR code.

“Brick-and-mortar businesses and sellers can receive payments by presenting a generated printed copy of the QR code without being online. Buyers can scan the code to make payments from their phone using any supported scan-to-pay platform.”

Moya is available to download on the Google Play Store. Users can sign up for payments through MoyaPayD if they have a valid South African ID.

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