Why do we still have paper airtime vouchers?

They cost money to print.

They have to be transported physically to many far-flung places.

They are obviously as good as money meaning they may as well be treated like cash-in-transit.

That’s risky and expensive.

They can get rained on or burnt or torn.

They can be stolen by crooks holding up the local kiosk.

People have been known to forge and sell them to unlucky punters who only find out that they don’t work once they get home.

So far so bad.

And it gets worse…

Merchants have to magically figure out, the optimum number of each denomination of airtime, for every network, that they need to have in stock, so that they never have to turn away a customer, without having to lock up precious cash in airtime.

I don’t know about you, but I know if I was running a kiosk or store, I’d be hard pressed to figure that out in my head, in amongst everything else I have to do to keep the show running.

No one wants to be the one sitting on those three 1000 bob Telkom vouchers for three months, do they?

That’s tied up money, that you have had to put up, up-front.

And then, the vouchers can sit there for ages, waiting to get stolen, damaged or expire.

Yeah, not exactly an ideal situation for a merchant.

For these reasons and more, we think that it’s high time the world transitioned to paperless, float-less, voucher-less airtime.

Without having to fill in forms and pay thousands of shillings up front in float, anyone with a smartphone that wants to, should be able to become a local airtime merchant.

They should be able to sell any denomination of airtime for any network, just-in-time and earn a decent commission for doing so.

They should not have to lock up all the money, take all the risks and suffer all the inconveniences of transacting in physical vouchers.

Best of all, they should be able to pay for their transaction fulfilment from mobile money and all without having to download, install and learn any new applications.

That sounds a lot like the WhatsTopApp merchant airtime channel which sounds to us is where you belong if you are still suffering the pitfalls of selling physical vouchers.

Click here and find out how to start selling voucher-less, float-free, virtual airtime tokens using WhatsTopApp.

I’m betting once you do, it will be the last time you stock any physical voucher.