Ugandan motorbike-hailing App SafeBoda wants to be more than just a transporting option for its users with a series of innovations it is churning out and reportedly working on. Early into the year, SafeBoda is confident the future of its operations are only getting started and that they are working tirelessly to roll out more innovations this year.
As the popular boda-boda hailing app prepares to enter the fintech space, SafeBoda’s latest app update now allows users to benefit from the 10% annual interest rate that the company is compounding allowing you to earn daily.
The new savings feature dubbed ‘Wallet Interest’ on its app allows users to earn interest on their daily SafeBoda Wallet balance and any SafeBoda customer can access this feature both on iOS and Android as long as they are using the updated version.
“Wallet Interest is a new feature by SafeBoda to enable our customers to earn more with their wallets. All customers have to do is to keep at least UGX 5,000 on their wallet and it will earn a 10% annual interest paid daily”, Shafiq Manafa the Head of Payments at SafeBoda told Afritechpost.
Mr Shafiq Manafa believes that users are the winners with the latest feature as they will get far higher interest than some of the other providers that are giving about 5% per annum and that the new innovation is innovated with the community and its users in mind. He also adds that this is aimed at encouraging users to earn more but also save as much as they can.
“According to a 2017 World Bank report, only 16% of the adult population save with formal financial institutions and another 60% keep their savings at home. SafeBoda has always tried to innovate services based on the needs of its community and we believe this is one of them.”, Mr Shafiq explained.
The latest development follows a report that SafeBoda is working on a feature that will enable its users to send and receive money for free using the SafeBodaWallet. Seeing that the ride-hailing company is headed towards a core fintech space, handling and processing payments for its users is something SafeBoda has positioned itself to provide.
Customers who opt to earn interest and save on their SafeBoda Wallets are free to use the money on their wallets as they wish. And can therefore choose to spend it all on other features on the app or withdraw it.
“So every about 12:00 am of the next day the customer will receive a notification from SafeBoda informing of how much they have earned in interest that day (very exciting and unique) and if they click on the transactions button they are able to see a breakdown of how much interest they earned each day”, Mr Shafiq explained.
In addition, SafeBoda’s Shafiq explained that because the interest is a percentage of your wallet balance of a particular day, a customer with a 500,000/ wallet balance won’t earn the same as a customer of 5,000/-.
