Messaging app Moya has 3.5 million daily active users and 6.5 million monthly active users in South Africa, developer Datafree has announced.<\/p>\n
Datafree CEO Gour Lentell has also told MyBroadband that the app has consistently ranked in the top 5 most downloaded applications on the Google Play store in South Africa for several weeks.<\/p>\n
Lentell said that Moya has often outperformed WhatsApp and TikTok in terms of downloads in South Africa.<\/p>\n
What sets Moya apart from its competitors is that it doesn\u2019t consume your mobile data but relies on reverse-billing agreements with MTN, Vodacom, Telkom, and Cell C.<\/p>\n
According to Datafree, Moya lets you send messages and voice notes, and offers access to several other services without paying for the data.<\/p>\n
The company said that Moya works on the supported networks even when you have no airtime or data balance.<\/p>\n
Lentell explained that they subsidise users\u2019 data costs in several different ways.<\/p>\n
\u201cSimilar to the Google, WeChat and Facebook models, Moya\u2019s 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
One of those ways is through business messaging, examples of which are:<\/p>\n
While advertising is a component of Moya\u2019s revenue model, Lentell said it is minimal.<\/p>\n
Another service that earns money for the platform and helps offset user data charges is MoyaPayD, a payment service from which Datafree receives transaction fees.<\/p>\n
While MoyaPayD was only \u201csoft-launched\u201d in July, Datafree announced this week that it had passed 100,000 registered users.<\/p>\n
Lentell said that an e-wallet payment platform is an essential part of the vision of Moya.<\/p>\n
\u201cSimilar 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
According to Lentell, they are working on several key features for MoyaPayD.<\/p>\n
These include user payments for premium and subscription content, a Moya business portal for MoyaPayD merchants and employee payroll services, partnerships with financial service providers, and a new release of Datafree\u2019s classifieds service.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe marketplace for merchant sales is a key priority for us at the moment, with a large focus on opening up the marketplace on Moya to make it easier for anyone to be a part of the app,\u201d Lentell said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will be adding merchant services so that businesses can pay employees within Moya or get paid through Moya.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company also recently announced that it is working on an iOS version of Moya.<\/p>\n
It said that the first version of Moya for iPhone would have data-free messaging and MoyaPayD.<\/p>\n
Datafree also stated that the first version of Moya for iPhone would not have the Discover part of the app \u2014 mainly because Apple has stringent rules about how apps must look and work.<\/p>\n
Lentell said that they have big ambitions for Moya.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt our current growth rate, we have no doubt that we will hit our target of 25 million active users by 2023.\u201d<\/p>\n
Datafree says its Moya messaging and financial services app has millions of active users in South Africa and consistently ranks as one of the top downloaded apps in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":415768,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[72642,35,72640],"class_list":["post-415766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-datafree","tag-headline","tag-moya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415766"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415766"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":415770,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415766\/revisions\/415770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}