BY DARGIE KAHSAY
Following the conclusion of the 2023 Mobile World Congress (MWC), held from February 27 to March 02 in Barcelona, Spain focusing on Financial Technology, Ethio Telecom CEO Firehiwot Tamiru said that in addition to expanding its traditional telecom services, Ethio Telecom is facilitating and accelerating digital financial system in Ethiopia through Telebirr application.
The Barcelona mobile congress that brought together world telecom operators gives due focus on accelerating financial technology and unleashing next technologies in the digital finance across the world. Ethio Telecom did participate in the annual mobile event in Barcelona. Following the event, Firehiwot told local media that, the giant telecom operator in Ethiopia, Ethio Telecom, is working to speedup digital financing in Ethiopia parallel to its traditional telecom service expansion across the country.
“We launched telebirr mobile app in May 2021. Just in less than two years, the Ethio Telecom launched telebirr mobile app. It is showing a fascinating level of advancement as it attracts over 30 million subscribers. Ethio telecom is working to extend mobile financial technology,” Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Ethio Telecom, Firehiwot said recently.
Telebirr is a mobile-based money transaction application system launched by Ethio Telecom in May 2021. Ethio Telecom CEO presented the experience of the company’s mobile financial technology during the 2023 Mobile Congress at Barcelona. Just three weeks after the Barcelona event, Ethio Telecom announced the upgrading of telebirr application to Telebirr Supper App with the goal of accelerating inclusive, easy and fast digital financial payment through mobile in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia launched ‘Digital Ethiopia-2025’ strategy to accelerate the journey of digitalization and to realize it by 2025. As a giant telecom service provider, including 5G internet access, Ethio Telecom is working towards introducing new technologies and expanding the available ones just to make the services easily accessible. The 129 years old telecom operator in Ethiopia, Ethio Telecom, is continuing introducing new technologies and expanding its services to help the realization of the 2025 digitalization vision of Ethiopia.
According to a statement by Ethio Telecom released following the launching of the upgraded telebirr supper app last week, the telecom operator is working to bridging financial inclusion gap in Ethiopia and to deliver fast and easy financial services to citizens conveniently from their whereabouts with low transaction costs. According to Ethio Telecom, launched in May 2021, telebirr digital payment application has now acquired over 30 million subscribers in less than two years. This fast, easy and convenient digital payment platform has been playing critical roles in easing the day-to-day business activities of the society since then.
As its customers are growing at fast rate, the telebirr digital payment platform has been able to spearhead the development of digital payment in Ethiopia and has become an instrumental pillar in advancing Ethiopia’s digital economy, Ethio Telecom stressed. It added that telebirr platform has showcased its capabilities and achievements as a preferred digital payment platform since its launch.
Only within 22 months, telebirr digital payment system has acquired over 101 thousand agents, 28 thousand merchants, integrated with 19 commercial banks and generated over 1.95 million dollars international remittance from 44 countries, Ethio Telecom announced on its statement. It also reported that with its recently launched digital financial service Telebirr Mela, a micro credit platform, telebirr has lent over 2.1 billion birr to over 1.4 million users and enabled 400 thousand customers to deposit over 1.7 billion birr in Telebirr Sanduq, a micro saving service.
All these services are being provided only through mobile application and customers are easily transacting their finance for their intended purposes from anywhere just by using their mobile phones.
“On the other hand, we have integrated telebirr digital payment system with several service rendering government and non-governmental organizations so as to modernize their services and make all payments possible in one stop, thereby getting customers’ service delivery convenient and hustle free.The platform as well enables to pay bulk payments, traffic penalty payment and serves as the payment channel for the national fuel subsidy scheme and other national mega project payments,” Ethio Telecom stated.
Understanding the ever-growing roles of digital finance and expansion of services, increasing demands in the digital payment and with the goal of easing day-to-day activities, Ethio Telecom upgrades the telebirr app last week to Telebirr Supper App. It stated that it upgraded telebirr App to telebirr super App aiming at transcending the momentum of the multi-faceted roles of digital payment platform, to meet the ever growing demands of the promising developments of digital payment and to ease the day to day lifestyle of the society. The upgraded App, Telebirr Super App, according to Ethio Telecom, has all-in-one solution with more customer experience excelling features.
Launched on 23 of March 2023, telebirr super App, is the improved version of telebirr app which aims to enhance the day to day activities of customers of mobile money users and the business community. “The telebirr superApp, we have launched today, has been developed to support and enhance the day-to-day life of the technology users and the business entities and enable their customers to easily access their services via the platform,” Ethio Telecom stated on its statement.
According to the telecom operator the telebirr superApp would play paramount roles in enabling its customers to access telebirr financial services, e-commerce and Mini Apps/Programs and social networking and lifestyle. In addition, it will also allow users to use the app for a number of purchasing processes and transactions in one digital market place. The new and advanced mobile app is expected to accelerate Ethiopia’s mobile money landscape.
The newly launched superApp mobile money platform is also expected to solve the performance, security system, login and registration time, consumption of phone memory and other challenges that have been observed in the existing platform, telebirr app. By solving these challenges, the new platform is expected to invite more customers, to make accessible digital financial transaction and to help the business environment by easing money transactions.
As to Ethio Telecom, the newly launched platform, telebirr superApp comprises new features and functions such as “biometric authentication, My Ethiotel and our partners’ Apps and many more essential features are incorporated into the menus to make sure that customers can obtain seamless, integrated, efficient, flexible, contextualized user experience.” Furthermore, the new platform has a variety of products and services with an increase ease of use to navigate for specific services in one digital market place.
“Our esteemed customers can easily update and use the new telebirr SuperApp version from play store, App store and App gallery without experiencing any inconvenience,” Ethio Telecom announced.
Ethio Telecom, with a total of over 70 million subscribers stated that the new mobile money platform would help customers to conduct variety of purchasing processes and financial transactions as the new platform incorporates new features and functions. The telecom service provider anticipates the new platform to further enhance the growing transaction by diversifying the services.
According to the company, only during the first half of the current budget year, 2022/23, telebirr users transacted over 166 billion birr generating over 82 billion birr in revenue. And the company believes the newly launched app would enhance the digital money transaction and the revenue.
Ethio Telecom appreciates telebirr users, customers, business partners, financial institutions, business enterprises and service rendering governmental and non-governmental institutions as they contribute their parts in the process of building digital economy and realizing the digital transformation of the nation. It calls all stakeholders and key players in the ecosystem to jointly work through integrating the available systems and applications so as to fully utilize the mobile technology to create wealth and job opportunity in Ethiopia.
The Ethiopian Herald March 31/2023
