Orange Kenya recently unveiled a new service dubbed Pewa which allows prepaid subscribers to purchase airtime on credit and pay later.

This service is more or less similar to what Safaricom and Airtel offers their subscribers in form of Okoa Jahazi and Kopa Credo respectively. There are though certain features that Pewa could borrow from its predecessors, Okoa Jahazi and Kopa Credo.

Increasing amount that can be borrowed

The amount of airtime one can borrow through Pewa is limited to KES 15. Okoa Jahazi on the other hand allows subscribers to borrow from as low as KES 10 to KES 100 airtime while Kopa Credo allows subscribers to borrow from KES 5 to KES 500 airtime. Pewa could consider expanding the amount that one can borrow.

Qualification criteria

Once the amount that one can borrow is increased, Orange Kenya will probably have to raise the bar before one qualifies to get airtime on credit. For Safaricom, one has to have been an active subscriber for at least 6 months while in Airtel one’s line has to have been active for at least 2 months; one also has to have cleared their outstanding balance before qualifying for another loan.

The 10% Fee

Subscibers who purchase airtime from Pewa won’t incur an additional 10 percent fee if they repaid the amount with 24 hours of purchase. If one pay’s after 24 hours, an additional 10 percent fee will be incurred. Airtel permanently did away with the service fee charged to those who purchase airtime through Kopa Credo, allowing subscribers to acquire airtime on credit and pay it back without an additional service fee. This has contributed to increased customer loyalty with latest statistics from Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) showing that Airtel recorded the largest gains in new subscriptions over the period between April and June 2012 as comparisons to gains made by the other mobile operators.