27 April 2017 12:00 am
Pic by Pradeep Pathirana
By Zahara Zuhair
Keeping in line with the current digitization trends, Sri Lanka’s national mobile service provider Mobitel, introduced a digital recharge system, becoming the first mobile services operator to introduce such a system in Sri Lanka.
How this service works is, retailers can use a POS machine and print their own recharge cards to issue to their customers. It replaces the recharge scratch cards and reloads which is widely used by customers at present to top up their accounts.
SGM Sales and Channel Development Chandika Vitharana said that they wanted to introduce a service that is environmental-friendly. Also they wanted to increase efficiency and reduce their costs. He said that this machine is similar to debit/credit card machines used in stores. Apart from banks, he said that this is the first time a telecommunication company is introducing this service.
“Our partners are One PrePay from Middle-East. They are supporting from a software perspective. And our dealer Channel Life Cycle putting money in to this and also supporting. They have invested a lot of money on this. And from Mobitel’s perspective, we have done a lot of testing,” he said.
One PrePay Lanka (Pvt.) Ltd, Director/General Manager M.C. Varghese said that their company established in 2006 in UAE, is the first company to introduce this electronic distribution channel in UAE.
The benefits of the service as noted were; not requiring forecasting of cards, availability of all products, eliminates thefts and loss of cards, eliminates inventory maintenance, easy to control and monitoring etc.
It was noted that this POS machine, which is similar to the phone, also facilitates various promotions, discount programmes and other initiatives to be conducted.
Customers can even make post-paid bill payments through the POS machines and retail partners can print out data and IDD cards as needed, it was noted.
The available products through this machine will be; voice card, data card, IDD card, post paid bill, reload etc. Mobitel said that they are looking forward to add more products to this service.
Fifty POS machines were distributed free-of-charge to retailers during the launch