The Group’s ability to
develop and distribute
innovative prepaid
products and services
 through its global footprint of touch points has
allowed it to “take” first-world
products
and services
to these consumers
and bridge the
“access”
gap.
In essence,
Blue Label is able to
enhance the consumer’s ability to
transact conveniently, affordably and
with greater
accessibility and choice.
Prepaid is a convenient
method of payment
for consumers, who are now able to purchase Blue
Label’s products anywhere and anytime. Prepaid
provides for forced discipline in budgeting, ensuring
no surprises at month-end, as is so often the case in
the postpaid world.
The term “prepaid” has evolved into words such as
“pay-as-you-go” or “capped” – the latter particularly
favoured in Australia and the USA. Another
development in this space is “hybrid”, which is
postpaid with a specified monthly limit, and when
exhausted, is immediately sequenced by a prepaid
top-up for the same goods or services.
We believe that a key to distributing products and
services in emerging markets is to ensure that they
are available as a prepaid offering, not necessarily as a replacement, but as an alternative to postpaid.
Prepaid empowers new groups of consumers and our
distribution to them is the cornerstone of our business.
The word “prepaid” is often perceived as a poor
man’s mechanism for the purchase of goods and
services. However, the convenience and budgetary
control that this method of transacting now extends
to all classes of the economic pyramid, is ameliorating
this perception.
| Consumers prefer transacting in
prepaid because: |
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Prepaid products are the ultimate
budgeting tool, as consumers have
absolute choice and control over their
spend. |
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The majority of prepaid transactions are
cash-based and using prepaid as a payment
mechanism eliminates the requirement for
credit checks. |
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Prepaid products can be conveniently
topped up, either virtually or physically, as
and when required by consumers. |
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Prepaid products are sold across a broad
footprint of traditional and non-traditional
outlets. |
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Prepaid products enable the world’s
unbanked and badly banked consumers to
transact efficiently. |
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While distribution plays an important role in the
economy, our leverage of the “last mile” of the
distribution channel is critical. Whoever manages
the “last mile” of the channel, actually owns the
whole distribution channel. Since the point-of-sale
terminal is always located in the “last mile”, the
person managing it decides what products and
services may be sold from it.
Our business is about the
distribution of secure electronic tokens of
value and services, and can be compared to a
virtual railroad. If a product can be digitised, it
can be distributed by us.
Our distribution
system is like a virtual railroad
delivering
prepaid goods.
We commenced building our virtual railroad with
the proprietary AEON platform, as the enabler for
transactions, which in this analogy, are the tracks
and locomotive. Each additional product is
another carriage on the train. Incremental costs
are minimal, because the heavy lifting to establish
the distribution network is already in place,
resulting in profit margins filtering straight to the
bottom line. |
