According to South African developer Datafree, its messaging app Moya is succeeding in its competition with WhatsApp in South Africa by setting itself apart – it doesn’t cost the user any data to send messages and voice notes. It has already amassed 3.5 million daily active users in a relatively short amount of time, and 6.5 million monthly active users. It has consistently ranked in the top five most downloaded apps on the Play Store in SA.
Read: French pay-TV operator Canal+ buys larger stake in MultiChoice
According to Datafree CEO Gour Lentell, Moya has often even outperformed the likes of WhatsApp and TikTok in terms of downloads in South Africa. It is able to offer the service to customers with out any data use by relying on reverse-billing agreements with MTN, Vodacom, Telkom, and Cell C.
“Similar to the Google, WeChat and Facebook models, Moya’s strategy is to build audience distribution at scale and monetise it in multiple ways with the range of services being expanded consistently and over time,” Lentell said.
Interestingly, Moya will work on the supported networks even if the user has no airtime or data available. Datafree is subsidising the data used by Moya users on these networks through several avenues, which include:
- Businesses placing their websites in the Moya Discover marketplace and paying reverse bill data costs to engage the Moya audience.
- Full-screen vertical video ads which are data-free, using the same format as Instagram stories ads.
- Moya Business API for enterprise messaging and chatbots, similar to the WhatsApp Business API.
- Moya Research — market research service, which the company says is being used by the major market research companies in South Africa.
That being said, the company hopes that the most of its revenue will be generated outside of marketing related activities. It has launched MoyaPayD, which is a mobile wallet that enables Moya customers to send money to each other. Datafree takes a small percentage of the payment as a transaction fee. It only launched to a select number of customers back in July, but it has already passed 100,000 active users.
“Similar to the WeChat model in China, MoyaPayD brings a new dimension to Moya giving users a fully integrated and digitally inclusive way to interact with the services they need, without having to leave the application,” Lentell said.
“At our current growth rate, we have no doubt that we will hit our target of 25 million active users by 2023.”
