Safaricom to start settling Okoa Jahazi using Bonga points if a customer defaults
Safaricom customers who default on their Okoa Jahazi will have their Bonga points deducted automatically to repay the debt
Safaricom customers who default on their Okoa Jahazi will have their Bonga points deducted automatically to repay the debt.
The new move by the giant telco is meant to reduce the value of Bonga points yet to be redeemed by customers worth billions of shillings.
Customers can request a credit advance, which they are required to settle within five days.
An advance-fee of 10 percent is charged for each Okoa Jahazi request, resulting in a customer receiving 90 percent of the credit advance.
“Dear customer, we have deducted 2,500 Bonga points for Sh750 to repay your Okoa loan,” reads a message to a Safaricom customer which places the value of each point at 30 cents.
Okoa Jahazi enables customers to keep communicating when their normal resources are depleted, with the subscribers expected to settle the debt within the set timeframe or face a ban from accessing the credit advance.
Each Safaricom subscriber earns loyalty points when using the telephony services, resulting in substantial resources which the telco is now tapping to settle unpaid Okoa Jahazi debt.
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The new development comes less than three months after Safaricom abandoned a plan to terminate its Bonga loyalty program by March 2022 after accruing Sh4.5 billion in liabilities.
Customers who had accumulated points prior to 2019 would have lost those points.
The newest position by the firm is against a November 2022 amendment of the programme’s terms and conditions that would have seen unclaimed points expire from January 1, 2023.
With liabilities expected to reach Sh4.5 billion by the end of March 2022, Safaricom had described the decision to let the unused Bonga Points expire as a commercial move intended to encourage redemption.
The telco began the loyalty programme in October 2017, giving both prepaid and postpaid subscribers a point for every Sh10 spent on its network.
The Bonga Points can be redeemed for rewards including talk-time (minutes), data bundles, and messaging bundles.
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