Boliba harnesses mobile technology

Bereng Mpaki

BOLIBA Savings and Credit, the country’s largest multi-purpose cooperative society, is set to harness the power of mobile money technology to improve its services before the end of the month.

The cooperative with a membership of 60 000, recently unveiled its first ever website and according to the General Manager Phethang Mpota, the developments are all part of a long-term plan of transforming and improving operations through technology.

He said they were at an advanced stage of linking mobile money services to Boliba’s account in collaboration with the country’s two mobile network operators.

“If things go according to plan, we are intending to launch these developments on 28 October,” Mr Mpota said.

He said the mobile money service would initially allow clients to check their account balances, transfer funds internally and pay other Boliba members, while other functions would be added over the course of time.

He said this was another way of extending their services to those who were unable to travel to the Boliba offices.

“The prevailing challenge that we only have service branches in Maseru, Mohale’s Hoek and Maputsoe will be addressed as people in other districts will now be able to access their Boliba account on their cellphones.”

The service would also cut out mobile money agents as funds would be transferred straight into the mobile money account from the Boliba account.

He also expressed happiness that Boliba’s digital transformation was well underway as “we have developed a website which is already up and running”. He gave the address as www.boliba.co.ls.

He said Boliba would use the website to further interact with clients while also marketing its products offerings.

He said the interactive website allowed users to perform certain self- service functions such as enquiries and it also featured a loan calculator which they could use to work out how much they should pay in monthly installments to service loans.

“A website is a face of any organisation and it is a form of advertisement through which we can disseminate information to the people about our products. It will also reduce the number of physical client visits to our centres for enquiries, saving them time and money in the process,” Mr Mpota said.

He said the digital transformation started in 2013 with the introduction of the Cooperatives Information Management Systems computer system.

He said more technological developments were in the offing and so far M7 million had been spent on the exercise.