Kenyan payments company, Cellulant, has made known its plans to unveil an everyday lifestyle app that is said to be the first payments Super app in Africa – Tingg.
The new app is a rebrand of its product for bill payments/management, Mula, and will bring together various individuals and business needs like remittances, bill payments, group investments, credit offerings and food delivery as well as gas orders into one app.
Speaking publicly for the first time about the company’s plan to launch its Super app, Cellulant’s Chief of Brand, Divine Muragijimana, said that with Tingg, Cellulant is looking to provide an inclusive platform where commerce takes place seamlessly for both businesses and individuals.
“Technology is making payments easier, faster and cheaper thus putting the focus on the exchange of goods and services and adding value to the end-consumer. This is what Tingg offers for individuals and businesses who are looking for a simplified, personalized one-stop-shop for their lifestyle needs.”
Divine Muragijimana.
A Super app is an all-in-all mobile app. It is known to combine all aspects of a consumer’s world and needs into a single platform. With them companies can expand into more spaces, generate more revenue and increase engagement. And this is exactly what Cellulant is doing.
Its Mula Payments provides a platform for customers to manage and pay their bills as well as buy airtime from all the various MNOs. Now building on this already existing infrastructure of payments, Tingg is touted to be a robust platform for Africa’s marketplace. More like a combination of a digital payment and commerce.
Overtime, consumers have begun to embrace these “Super apps” because they offer an integrated and efficient experience that organises almost every aspect of a user’s life. I mean, why have 5 apps when 1 single app can do all the work?
These apps first rose to prominence in Asia. Platforms like WeChat, Go-Jek, Grab are offering a variety of solutions spurn from their core services of messaging or transportation. These have allowed them reach more customers and connect them to more services.
Since they get to have an impressive amount of data about customers, Super apps are able to improve customer experience, make themselves more relevant, personalised and valuable.
Cellulant aspires to mimic what these apps have been doing in Asia and influence a consumer’s financial life across its 8 markets in Africa, including Nigeria. However, unlike other popular Super apps using transportation (ride-hailing) and social media services to drive engagement, Cellulant will be hinging on Mula payments success and its vast agent network to drive usage across Africa.
But it will not be without competition from existing local players. For example, the Opera-backed OPay in Nigeria. The startup has since launch being adding new verticals to its platform – ORide, OBus, OTrike, OFood, OWealth, OKash, transforming it into something of a Super App.
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