Safaricom Customers to Buy Stocks with their Bonga Points

The Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) has announced a partnership with the telecommunications company Safaricom to enable its customers to invest in stocks using their Bonga points.

Safaricom customers will be able to redeem their points through licensed Trading Participants or Stock Brokers. The Participants include NCBA Capital, Faida Investment Bank, AIB-AXYS, ABC Capital, Old Mutual Securities, Kingdom Securities, Suntra Investments, Francis Drummond & Company, Dyer & Blair Investments and Sterling Capital LTD.

More Trading Participants are expected to offer the service soon.

To invest, customers will redeem their points at a rate of KES 1 for every 5 points via the ‘Lipa Na Bonga’ menu on USSD *126# or MySafaricom App. Customers will then key in the Trading Participant’s Paybill number followed by their CDSC (Central Depository and Settlement Corporation) account number.

What are Bonga Points

Bonga is a loyalty scheme that was launched by Safaricom in 2007 to allow its customers to accumulate points based on usage of airtime on its network. Customers earn one Bonga Point for every Kshs 10 spent on the Safaricom network.

What this all means

The NSE has been trying to get a lot more retail investors to invest in the NSE. Currently, the NSE is dominated by institutional and foreign investors. But with a partnership like this, they may see an influx of retail investors.

As for you, instead of spending your Bonga points on a new phone or a fancy holiday, consider spending it to buy shares which will be beneficial to you financially in the future.

If you want to learn more about how to start trading shares at the NSE, read this article I wrote to help you get started.