BlackBerry announced Monday that it plans to allow BBM users in Africa (starting with Nigeria) to send money or airtime “as simply as they transfer photos or files.” It’s part of a wider push by BlackBerry to establish a presence in the mobile payments space, especially in emerging markets.
In Nigeria and South Africa, the company says it sees over half a million new users install BBM per month, which it believes is allowing “a network effects [to] take root in several markets across the continent.” Beyond that, it’s seeing “close to 10 million visits to the BBM Shop per month, and now over 26 million ad requests per day.”
These strong advertising numbers mean that South Africa and Nigeria “represent two of our biggest global opportunities,” BlackBerry said, adding that while “both are seen as developing economies, they are some of our top revenue-generating markets.”
The company already offers mobile payments in Indonesia, for example, an emerging country of around 250 million in Southeast Asia that still has many loyal BlackBerry users. But other popular messenger apps in these markets also offer mobile payments/wallets, including Line, WeChat (which just launched its peer-to-peer mobile wallet in South Africa), Kakao Talk, and others.
BlackBerry first pushed into mobile payments in June last year when it signed a three-year deal with mobile payments firm EnStream, a joint venture by Canada’s three largest wireless carriers, to secure and transfer credit card information between smartphone owners and banks, as we r
In Nigeria and South Africa, the company says it sees over half a million new users install BBM per month, which it believes is allowing “a network effects [to] take root in several markets across the continent.” Beyond that, it’s seeing “close to 10 million visits to the BBM Shop per month, and now over 26 million ad requests per day.”
These strong advertising numbers mean that South Africa and Nigeria “represent two of our biggest global opportunities,” BlackBerry said, adding that while “both are seen as developing economies, they are some of our top revenue-generating markets.”
The company already offers mobile payments in Indonesia, for example, an emerging country of around 250 million in Southeast Asia that still has many loyal BlackBerry users. But other popular messenger apps in these markets also offer mobile payments/wallets, including Line, WeChat (which just launched its peer-to-peer mobile wallet in South Africa), Kakao Talk, and others.
BlackBerry first pushed into mobile payments in June last year when it signed a three-year deal with mobile payments firm EnStream, a joint venture by Canada’s three largest wireless carriers, to secure and transfer credit card information between smartphone owners and banks, as we r
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