R U an ATM?

Introducing ‘Sente’, a Uganda breakthrough mobile service that re-invents personal banking and makes it available to millions of ‘ineligible’ bank customers.

‘Joe lives in Kampala and wants to send his sister Vicky 10,000 Ugandan Shillings ($5). He buys pre-paid airtime for that amount, but instead of topping up his own phone, he calls up the local phone kiosk operator in Vicky’s village. The phone kiosk operator uses the credit to top up his own phone, takes a commission of between 10 and 30%, and passes the rest onto Vicky in cash. The kiosk operator resells the airtime at a profit (it is after all his business)…’

Jan Chipchase and Indri Tulusan present Sente in their outstanding study for Nokia ‘Exploratory Field Research from Uganda and Beyond’.