Author: Hubtel

MPower Payments, a Ghana-made simple and seamless online payment app, won five awards including Top App of the Year at the second TopApps Awards this year.

The comprehensive online payment platform, MPower Payments, developed by SMSGH won Web App of the Year, Most Innovative New App of the Year, Top User Experience App of the Year, and Finance App of the Year. Plus the makers of MPower, SMSGH were also adjudged App Company of the Year.

Currently, MPower Payments integrates all cedi-based electronic payment systems including Mobile Money and ATM cards, and links them to both online and offline merchants in a way that enables users to make payments for goods and services online without exposing their details to cyber criminals.

It is very high on security with a green bar SSL, verified by US-based DigiCert on the advice of Dun and Bradstreet. It means in the rarest circumstance where a user’s details are compromised, DigiCert provides insurance cover for the user so it will bear the liabilities.

MPower Payments, which went live online about a year ago, attracted some 4,000 users by July 2013, recording transactions to the tune of GHC120,000 a month.

But currently, two months on, it now has over 15,000 registered accounts, recording more than 10,000 active users doing transactions of up to a million Ghana cedis.

As of July, it had a little over 400 registered merchants, but according to Senior Product Manager, George Mensah “we now have more merchants and many more and bigger merchants are coming onboard to ensure by the second transactions.”

The platform allows users to safely move money even from bank accounts and Mobile Money accounts to their MPower account for online transactions and vis-a-versa.

George Mensah believes the decoration of MPower Payments at this TopApps Awards would drive innovation, relevance, and commercialization in the app/software development industry.

“This goes to show that when you are developing an app you should think beyond the nice features of the app and think about how it can make life easier for people and how you can monetize it,” he said.

MPower Payments is currently a strictly cedi-based platform and active in only Ghana but SMSGH plans to take it to the rest of Africa by the third quarter of next year (Q3-14).

General Manager of SMSGH, Alex Adjei-Bram said the company’s emergence as App Company of the Year was also apt because they have developed several relevant apps like the JumpFon, which provides users with a bevy of mobile entertainment content on short code *714#.

It also has a bulk SMS app called MYtxtBox, and several other SMS aggregation apps for banks, insurance companies, media houses, political parties, and several organizations and individuals across Ghana and parts of Africa.

Meanwhile, at the TopApp Awards, organized by PopOut, eleven other apps, and one individual won competitive and honorary Awards.

The other Award winners include Mobile App of the Year – Nkyea Twi Phrasebook; SMS App of the Year – Infoline, Social App of the Year – Farmerline; Entertainment App of the Year – iWarrior and Kijiji; Utility App of the Year – Retail Tower and Health App of the Year – MoTech.

The others are Education App of the Year – MyPassCo; eGovernance App of the Year – 233Law, and Esoko won Agriculture App of the Year, while Eyram Tawiah of LetiArts was adjudged App Developer of the Year for developing iWarrior and Kijiji, believed to be Africa’s first game app in Apple Store.

Speaking at the award ceremony, Hon Victoria Hamah, Deputy Minister for Communication, emphasized the fact that “data is the future” and the apps which are developed locally must be “relevant to the business community and civil society”.

She emphasized the fact that with the continuous increase in bandwidth and mobile subscriptions, the country is ready for a data consumption revolution that requires the development of more apps.

The Deputy also said she was thoroughly impressed with the quantity, quality, and relevance of the apps exhibited at the Awards.

In her welcome address, Madam Dorothy Gordon, Director-General of Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT, revealed that apps developed from Ghana are ranked higher in terms of quality and finishing than most from other African countries, in the World Summit Awards, of which she is a judge.

PopOut, the organizers of the annual TopApps Award hope to host a more elaborate and highly competitive awards event next year with sponsorship and strategic partnership.

Managing Director of PopOut, Maximus Ametorgoh believes “this will create a sense of competition among the app developers and also empower the youth through the creation of innovative applications.”

“We want to be able to give more prizes by way of cash, resources, and packages to winners next year. We want the Telcos and other industry players to come on board. We live in the age of apps. Apps are the drivers of data consumption,” Ametorgoh said.

He further contended that the “internet is used to consume content online so there is the need to collaborate to create apps so subscribers can consume more data. People do not use the internet because it is cheap or free. They use it because of the content they want to consume. If there is no relevant content, people will not subscribe to or use the internet even if it is free.”

TopApps Award is an annual applications exhibition and award event which gives app developers in Ghana the opportunity to showcase their innovative apps and games to technology and business participants as well as win awards for their outstanding products. The apps are judged based on their market relevance, originality, and innovativeness.

Partners for TopApps Award 2013 include Google (Ghana), Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT, Nokia, Erke Ghana, EventStreet Africa, TelecomEye, GhanaBusinessNews and Citi97.3fm. TopApps Award is a PopOut initiative.

Source: www.myjoyonline.com

A similar story was also published on www.citifmonline.comMPower Payments, a Ghana-made simple and seamless online payment app, won five awards including Top App of the Year at the second TopApps Awards this year.

The comprehensive online payment platform, MPower Payments, developed by SMSGH won Web App of the Year, Most Innovative New App of the Year, Top User Experience App of the Year and Finance App of the Year. Plus the makers of MPower, SMSGH were also adjudged App Company of the Year.

Currently, MPower Payments integrates all cedi-based electronic payment systems including Mobile Money and ATM cards, and links them to both online and offline merchants in a way that enables users to make payments for goods and services online without exposing their details to cyber criminals.

It is very high on security with a green bar SSL, verified by US-based DigiCert on the advice of Dun and Bradstreet. It means in the rarest circumstance where a user’s details are compromised, DigiCert provides insurance cover for the user so it will bear the liabilities.

MPower Payments, which went live online about a year ago, attracted some 4,000 users by July 2013, recording transactions to the tune of GHC120,000 a month.

But currently, two months on, it now has over 15,000 registered accounts, recording more than 10,000 active users doing transactions of up to a million Ghana cedis.

As of July, it had a little over 400 registered merchants, but according to Senior Product Manager, George Mensah “we now have more merchants and many more and bigger merchants are coming onboard to ensure by the second transactions.”

The platform allows users to safely move money even from bank accounts and Mobile Money accounts unto to their MPower account for online transactions and vis-a-versa.

George Mensah believes the decoration of MPower Payments at this TopApps Awards would drive innovation, relevance, and commercialization in the app/software development industry.

“This goes to show that when you are developing an app you should think beyond the nice features of the app and think about how it can make life easier for people and how you can monetize it,” he said.

MPower Payments is currently a strictly cedi-based platform and active in only Ghana but SMSGH plans to take it to the rest of Africa by the third quarter of next year (Q3-14).

General Manager of SMSGH, Alex Adjei-Bram said the company’s emergence as App Company of the Year was also apt because they have developed several relevant apps like the JumpFon, which provides users with a bevy of mobile entertainment content on short code *714#.

It also has a bulk SMS app called MYtxtBox, and several other SMS aggregation apps for banks, insurance companies, media houses, political parties, and several organizations and individuals across Ghana and parts of Africa.

Meanwhile, at the TopApp Awards, organised by PopOut, eleven other apps, and one individual won competitive and honorary Awards.

The other Award winners include Mobile App of the Year – Nkyea Twi Phrasebook; SMS App of the Year – Infoline, Social App of the Year – Farmerline; Entertainment App of the Year – iWarrior and Kijiji; Utility App of the Year – Retail Tower and Health App of the Year – MoTech.

The others are Education App of the Year – MyPassCo; eGovernance App of the Year – 233Law, and Esoko won Agriculture App of the Year, while Eyram Tawiah of LetiArts was adjudged App Developer of the Year for developing iWarrior and Kijiji, believed to be Africa’s first game app in Apple Store.

Speaking at the award ceremony, Hon Victoria Hamah, Deputy Minister for Communication, emphasized the fact that “data is the future” and the apps which are developed locally must be “relevant to the business community and civil society”.

She emphasized the fact that with the continuous increase in bandwidth and mobile subscriptions, the country is ready for a data consumption revolution that requires the development of more apps.

The Deputy also said she was thoroughly impressed with the quantity, quality, and relevance of the apps exhibited at the Awards.

In her welcome address, Madam Dorothy Gordon, Director-General of Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT, revealed that apps developed from Ghana are ranked higher in terms of quality and finishing than most from other African countries, in the World Summit Awards, of which she is a judge.

PopOut, the organizers of the annual TopApps Award hope to host a more elaborate and highly competitive awards event next year with sponsorship and strategic partnership.

Managing Director of PopOut, Maximus Ametorgoh believes “this will create a sense of competition among the app developers and also empower the youth through the creation of innovative applications.”

“We want to be able to give more prizes by way of cash, resources, and packages to winners next year. We want the Telcos and other industry players to come on board. We live in the age of apps. Apps are the drivers of data consumption,” Ametorgoh said.

He further contended that the “internet is used to consume content online so there is the need to collaborate to create apps so subscribers can consume more data. People do not use the internet because it is cheap or free. They use it because of the content they want to consume. If there is no relevant content, people will not subscribe to or use the internet even if it is free.”

TopApps Award is an annual applications exhibition and award event that gives app developers in Ghana the opportunity to showcase their innovative apps and games to technology and business participants as well as win awards for their outstanding products. The apps are judged based on their market relevance, originality, and innovativeness.

Partners for TopApps Award 2013 include Google (Ghana), Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT, Nokia, Erke Ghana, EventStreet Africa, TelecomEye, GhanaBusinessNews and Citi97.3fm. TopApps Award is a PopOut initiative.

Source: www.myjoyonline.com

DevCongress in partnership with MPower Payments and SMSGH is hosting Ghana’s first ever E-Commerce Hackathon, which would gather software programmers to build services that solve everyday problems.

The maiden event dubbed ‘DevCongress MPower Hackathon’, is slated for Saturday, October 5, 2013, from 08:00am to 10:00pm at the iSpace Foundation, Osu Ako Adjei.

Chief Solutions Architect at SMSGH, Kwadwo Seinti told Adombusiness, Hackathon is an opportunity for business owners, entrepreneurs, IT managers, sales managers, customer care managers, and finance managers to register their website programmers to join other app developers in learning how to accept mobile and electronic payments online.

According to him, the gathering would also provide the opportunity for the website managers of various businesses to be introduced to the MPower Payment platform, which is Ghana’s most comprehensive payment platform that integrates all e-payment services such as Visa Cards and Mobile Money.

Seinti recalled, for instance, that paying for adverts on Myjoyonline is still manual and cumbersome, but that could also be made electronically and be integrated with the MPower Payment platform to enable Myjoyonline clients to place ads and pay directly online.

He is therefore urging businesses to “take advantage of this perfect opportunity to turn your business into a thriving online business where customers can buy, and actually pay for your goods and services online.”

“Free registration for the e-commerce hackathon is available on www.EgoTickets.com,” Seinti said. “This event will be powered by programming interfaces from Ghana’s only real online payment service, www.MPower.com.gh, and SMSGH.com.”

Meanwhile, electronic transactions on MPower Payment platform have shot up from 4,000 in July to about 13,000 currently, and the financial value of those transactions has also shot up from about GHC120,000 to more than a million Ghana cedis now.

The main transactions used to be the purchase of mobile phone airtime, but now ticket purchase, particularly for Roverman Production plays and other events by National Theatre are also on the increase.

Source: www.myjoyonline.comHackathon 2013

Kokomlemle, Accra, Ghana – SMSGH a leading brand in mobile communication, content, and commerce aggregation has been nominated in 6 categories for this year’s Top App Awards.

Top Apps Award is Ghana’s premier apps exhibition and awards event. After weeks of intense judging activities, the shortlisted nominees for the 2013 Top Apps Awards were outdoors on the 25th of September 2013 via a statement on the website of the award, www.topappawards.com. According to the organizers the awards received over 50 nominations for 27 apps competing for 14 different award categories.

This year’s event is the second edition riding on the back of a successfully organized event last year. The categories include Mobile App of the Year, SMS App of the Year, Social App of the Year, Entertainment App of the Year, Utility App of the Year, Health App of the Year, Education App of the Year, eGovernance App of the Year, Agriculture App of the Year, and App Developer of the Year.
Awards will also be given out for Web App of the Year, Innovative New App, Top User Experience App, Finance App Company of the Year, and the much anticipated Top App of the Year.

Barely a year into its introduction, MPower Payments, received as many as 5 nominations – Web App of the Year, Innovative New App, Top User Experience App of the Year, Finance App of the Year, and Top App of the Year.
SMSGH has also been nominated for the coveted App Company of the Year for the marvelous work done at aggregating various domestic and international application services.

Commenting on the nominations, the Chief Technology Officer of SMSGH, Mr. Kwadwo Seinti, expressed delight and applauded his team of dedicated developers and nCodeDevLabs an app development partner on MPowerPayments for a good job done. He said “MPower is leading the dawn of a new era where online merchants and shopping enthusiasts will enjoy a convenient, safer, and overall better payment experience’’.

The top Apps Awards and Exhibition event is slated for Friday 4th October 2013 at Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT at 5pm.

The year’s event partners include Google, Nokia, Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT, Erke Ghana, Citi 97.3FM, TelecomEye, and GhanaBusinessNews.

Kokomlemle, Accra, Ghana – 24th September 2013 – SMSGH, a leading brand in mobile communications, commerce, and content aggregation weekend participated in Ghana’s biggest annual corporate sporting event, the Citi Business Olympics, emerging as the winner of the Chess trophy.

The event saw over 50 corporate organizations from the Accra-Tema metropolis competing for honors and bragging rights in various sporting events — beach soccer, table tennis, lime and spoon race, 50-meter dash, beach volley, tug of war, chess, scrabble, snooker, arm wrestling, etc.

SMSGH staged a comeback to the Citi Business Olympics having stayed away since its first appearance in 2006. Competing in more than 10 games with a staff team of 23 it was easy for anyone to tag the underdog status to the team. In the end, Mr. Andrew Kwame Nyakpo, a Software Engineer, emerged winner of the Chess competition, defeating all contestants and ousting the reigning champion.

Apart from this, Team SMSGH had good runs in many other competitions, qualifying for finals of the Business Obstacle Race, Snooker, and the 50-Meter Dash, and ousting the reigning Tug-of-War and Arm Wrestling champions in the quarterfinals to prove to corporate Ghana that the team is not only a force to reckon with in mobile aggregation, but also in sporting competitions.

Announcing the list of winners of the entire competition on CitiFM’s Tuesday morning show, the host Bernard Avle, said he was not surprised at SMSGH winning the Chess trophy as according to him SMSGH “…are the geeks of this world”.

The Citi Business Olympics, critically acclaimed to be the biggest corporate event in Ghana, is an annual event organized by Citi 97.3 FM, an Accra-based radio station. This year’s event held at Muuston Beach, Kokrobite in Accra was its seventh edition.

SMSGH remains Ghana’s leading mobile value-added-services company with services and applications in use by more than 7 million mobile subscribers. The company aims at blending communication, content, and commerce to create Africa’s most useful technology aggregation company. Its flagship solutions include MPower, MYtxtBOX, and Jumpfon.

MTN Ghana is positioning itself strategically to consolidate its lead in the data market by opening up more platforms for App Developers to come up with locally relevant apps for a soon-to-be-launched MTN App Store on the MTNPlay platform.

MTN, like all the other telcos, has already opened up its SMS platform for App Developers to run value-added service (VAS) through shortcodes.

But Innovations Manager at MTN, Abdul Latif Isahaku told ADOMBUSINESS MTN is gearing up to open up its USSD (unstructured supplementary service data), WAP (wireless application protocol), and Voice platforms for App Developers to come up with fresh apps on all these platforms to enhance data consumption, greater experience for smartphone users on MTN and a continuous revenue stream for App Developers.

The telecom market leader already commands 65% data market share as per the National Communication Authority’s data market statistics, but it sees more opportunities to grow its market share and data revenue through collaboration with App Developers.

Isahaku told ADOMBUSINESS MTN is proud of its growing data revenues but “every day we watch our voice and SMS revenues being threatened so we are pursuing our vision to provide a new bold digital world more vigorously to capture the data market.”

MTN has therefore launched an App Challenge, which is the first proactive move by a telco in Ghana to invite App Developers to put the Apps into the MTN App Store and rest assured of regular revenue flow.

“The winning apps would be the seed apps to start the MTN Apps Store, which would continue to invite more locally relevant apps through similar competitions every year and through other avenues. But the focus is to encourage apps that could not be easily found in other App stores like Google Play and Apple App Shop,” he said.

Local App Developers have been looking forward to telcos opening up their APIs (application programming interface) to allow app developers to directly bill users of their apps, but Isahaku said users of apps in the MTN App Store would be billed through deductions from their MTN airtime, and that can only be done by the MTN.

“We however acknowledge that the apps are the intellectual property of the App Developers so we can assure them of a very fair revenue share arrangements. We are adopting a number of revenue share arrangements that would favour each category of App Developers on our platform,” Isahaku assured.

Meanwhile, for the participants of the App Challenge, each contestant would have the chance to pitch their App to a carefully selected panel of judges, and five final winners would be selected. Each of the five would win a token of GHC10,000, and one Samsung Galaxy S4 handset.

“The overall top winner would get a fully-paid trip to attend an industry conference outside of the country in addition to his/her GHC10,000 and Galaxy S4 handset,” Isahaku said.

As part of promoting the App Challenge, MTN is organizing two road shows in Kumasi and Tamale in the coming weeks, ahead of inviting submissions.

Meanwhile, some App Developers have been telling ADOMBUSINESS MTN’s move is in the right direction because it provides a ready market for apps and would help local app developers easily monetize their apps.

But they believe the drive towards boosting data revenue makes it more imperative for telcos operating in Ghana to learn from giants like Google, Apple, and Safaricom and adopt revenue share arrangements that favour App Developers.

Industry giants like Apple and Google maintain revenue share arrangements that give them not more than 35% of revenues from app downloads, while the greater chunk of the revenue goes to the App Developers. Some of them have actually invested heavily into tech startups and put huge sums of money in the hands of App Developers to come up with new Apps.

But in Ghana, telcos keep between 55% and 70% of the revenue from the SMS-based apps that the VAS providers use to generate revenue for telcos. And telcos are not investing in tech startups either.

General Manager of SMSGH, Alex Adjei Bram thinks “the telcos must recognize more the role apps will play in enriching mobile service portfolio and revenue generation for the telcos, and open up a lot more channels beyond SMS.”

He said, “telcos should review their revenue share positions to align with the global industry practice.”

Bram is confident the telcos would eventually open up some more as some of them have already invested in state-of-the-art Service Delivery Platform (SDP), which could further improve billing platform connectivity.

“Beyond what the telcos can do, there are also service aggregators (such as SMSGH and Rancard) with sophisticated platforms to enable app developers to distribute and monetize apps across telcos and countries. The benefits are left to the local developers to harness,” he said, adding that up to 65% of app revenues for SMSGH are generated by developers outside of Ghana.

MD of POPOUT, Maximus Amertogoh is urging telcos to invest at least 70% of their R&D (research and development) budget into product development in start-ups, adding that the telcos could acquire the startups to trigger an innovation revolution in the app development space.

He also recalled that last year alone, Apple paid US$10 billion to App Developers because it had a revenue share arrangement that favors the App Developers. He thinks telcos should take 30% and give 70% to the App Developers.

On the question of the opening APIs, Amertogoh thinks it would be mutually beneficial for the telcos to do so, but “we need to get more people to use technology first before we focus on the payment. We need to also develop products of commercial value to attract more users or increase the frequency of usage.”

Source: www.myjoyonline.com

Kokomlemle, Accra, Ghana – SMSGH, a leading brand in mobile communication, content, and payment aggregation has had its co-founder/General Manager, Alex Adjei Bram featured in a United Nations General Assembly conference on promoting entrepreneurship as a means to tackle the world’s most pressing problems. The conference hosted on 27^th June 2013 included a showcase of some top entrepreneurs from around the world.

The conference – which was the result of the passing of an Israeli-led resolution calling on member states to promote entrepreneurship — is part of efforts by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Israeli Mission to the UN to steer away from conflict-oriented issues and brand itself as a world-leader in using innovation as a means of battling poverty, creating jobs, and increasing growth.

In attendance were the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the General Assembly President Vuk Jeremic, and representatives from around the world, including Kuwait, Tunisia, and Bahrain.

“Entrepreneurs must be encouraged to stand at the frontline of socio-economic change, in the service of sustainable development,” President Jeremic, said at the conference. “They are the ones who are often best-placed to take the first crucial steps towards breaking the cycle of poverty in their surroundings.”

As part of the conference, a slideshow to recognize thriving entrepreneurs was played on a screen in the main Assembly hall during the event. Twenty-eight entrepreneurs from different backgrounds across the world were captured with varied inscriptions based on their expertise and innovations.

See the full list here

When asked what entrepreneurship means in email correspondence, Alex wrote ‘For me, entrepreneurship means a life-long vocation of innovating for human comfort and advancement.’

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The Israeli Mission to the UN represents the Jewish State and the Jewish people on the global stage of the United Nations which has worked to promote international peace, prosperity, and security through UN institutions for over sixty-four years.

Ghana’s only online payment service, MPower Payments, has recorded over 4,000 active users and is currently processing thousands of transactions to the tune of about GHC 120,000 every month.

MPower also has more than 400 corporate customers and merchants. Its green bar SSL certificate has been verified by DigiCert on the advice of Dun and Bradstreet.

MPower was established by  SMSGH to aggregate all cedi-based electronic payment systems in a way that enables users to make payments for goods and services online without exposing their details to cyber criminals.

The service allows the user electronically to deposit money via a Speed Banking voucher, Visa card, Mastercard, Mobile Money (MTN, Tigo, Airtel) or direct bank deposit into their MPower account, and to use this balance to transact business online anytime, anywhere.

Currently users can purchase airtime on MTN, Airtel, Vodafone and Expresso, pay their DSTV and ECG bills and pay for goods and services from a number of merchants such as yougora.com, ahonya.com, tisu.com.gh and dtechghana.com.

Source: www.telecompaper.com

Ghana’s leading players in the mobile applications sector of the telecommunications industry have joined forces under an umbrella body to ensure quality of service and sanity in the mobile value-added services sector.

The group, calling itself the Wireless Applications Service Providers Association of Ghana (WASPAG) currently consists of some of the top players in the industry such as Mobile Content.com, SMSGH, Rancard Solutions, MTech Communications, Nosmay, TXT Ghana and MediaEdge-gsm.

They have all signed on to a very comprehensive Code of Ethics published on the WASPAG website – www.waspag.com with a determination to protect end users against bad practices and abuse in the system.

These are organizations that develop, deploy, market, and manage various wireless and mobile applications that serve subscribers across all Ghana networks.

The services they provide include bulk sms, group messaging, banking and commerce, lifestyle and entertainment, social media, micro-billing for digital goods like music downloads, mobile application downloads, and others, plus mobility solutions and several others; and their services are deployed over SMS, MMS, Voice, USSD, WAP, and GPRS/Internet.

In effect, members of WASPAG constitute the main back office engine for the wireless/mobile-based VAS for all the telecom operators in Ghana, for banks, insurance companies, event organizers, even some handset makers, media houses, and practically anybody or entity which has any digital product or service to provide within the WASP environment.

Members of WASPAG have over the years worked separately and successfully without any common set of code of ethics, but they now feel the need to join forces and self-regulate to consolidate the gains made, and more importantly, to prevent abuse of clients and also secure the interest of genuine industry players against the bad nuts.

Director of Regulatory Affairs for WASPAG, who is also General Manager of Mobile Content.com Conrad Nyuur said WASPAG members are becoming concerned about the influx of individuals who sit in Ghana or abroad and use overseas gateways to send bulk mobile/wireless content to people in Ghana at midnight and charge them without end-users permission and therefore create a bad name for genuine industry players.

These nefarious quarks are for instance responsible for phone users receiving SMS or some mobile content from shortcodes they did not subscribe to and getting charged for it.

There have also been instances where phone users subscribe to short code service and get charged regularly but never get the service, while others also subscribe to SMS banking service but never get service even though they get charged for it, and some of them are down to pure fraud where some fake WASPs pretend to be organizations they are not and send messages on behalf of that organization.

“Most of these fake players are not registered locally and yet they operate WASP services here and some of them send unsavory and deceptive messages/content on behalf of unidentifiable clients to unsuspecting Ghanaians. We are concerned that such activities will make the National Communication Authority (NCA) jump on all of us one of these days and that will not be good for our industry,” Nyuur said.

He noted that the WASP industry in Ghana is only about 10 years old and still an emerging one but the challenges it is facing from infiltrators are a threat to its survival.

Nyuur said the rationale for forming WASPAG, therefore, is to bring all genuine locally registered players within the WASP ecosystem together for effective self-regulation through the Code of Ethics and to assist the NCA to apply the rules more effectively to weed out the bad nuts.

He said WASPAG would also establish an infrastructure for collecting feedback from the public and that would assist members to deal with public complaints long before it even gets to the telecom network or the regulator, adding that phone users can also report abuses on the WASPAG website www.waspag.com.

“Our Code of Ethics for instance empowers our members to filter the ID of anyone using members’ networks to distribute mobile content and when we find that consumer’s rights are being violated we are required to either report or block that person’s access,” he said.

He said WASPAG would also provide economies of scale for the local industry players because it would eventually ensure that only locally registered players are allowed to operate in Ghana and that would mean overseas players would need local partners to operate in Ghana.

“This can create business for the genuine locally registered WASPs,” he said.

Nyuur said WASPAG is therefore lobbying all the players in the local WASP industry to get onboard the WASPAG train to ensure a wider and broader application of the Code of Ethics to ensure sanity and quality of service in the industry.

WASPAG is an independent, non-profit self-regulatory body established in December 2012 with a remit of representing and self-regulating mobile-based value-added services providers, otherwise known as WASPs.

WASPAG is recognized by The Ghana Telecoms Chamber, all mobile network providers in Ghana, the National Communications Authority (NCA), and the Government of Ghana through the Ministry of Communications.

Source: Joy News

Kokomlemle, Accra, Ghana – SMSGH, the leading mobile messaging and content aggregation in Ghana, today announced the official release of the SMSGH Unity USSD APIs as the newest addition to its messaging platform. This unveils a new capability that dramatically makes mobile messaging even very interactive.

In its continuous quest to deliver a world-class messaging platform with offerings for unbeatable data processing synergy, service innovation, scalability, and ultimately, channel convergence, SMSGH has taken a significant leap forward with the introduction and availability of USSD API and USSD Service Codes on its messaging platform.

USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) is a GSM based communication technology used to transact session-based messages between mobile phones and application servers aggregating on a mobile network. It is very interactive and normally faster than the conventional means of messaging as mobile phone subscribers simply dial a service code to access and interact with a menu of services. (eg. *714#).

Services ideal with USSD as the bearer include mobile chat, m-commerce, mobile banking, call-related services and any other service that requires interaction between the user and application servers such as below;

• Menu Browsing
• Callback Service
• “Pull” based Services like informational services
• News
• Weather
• Movies and Theatre Listings
• Sports Update
• Currency Update
• Stock Market
• Telephone Directory
• Voting / Polling
• Flash Emergency Information
• Travel Reservations (Airline / Hotel)
• Sponsored Menu Item / Advertisement
• Companies / Shops / Theaters can get listed on the Menu and promote their services
• Contests and Tele-voting
• Virtual Money Transaction
• Interactive Interface to Corporate ERP
• Mobile Marketing, etc.

USSD is most often used in conjunction with SMS especially for subscription based content services where mobile users subscribe to content services via USSD and receive such contents via SMS. In such cases, SMS is used to “push” a reply or updates to the handset and USSD is used for command-and-control only.

The SMSGH Unity USSD API enables service providers to deploy applications on multiple networks in one seamless integration — no need to implement different APIs for different networks.

SMSGH, named in the February 2012 edition of the prestigious Forbes Africa Magazine’s list of the ‘TOP 20 TECH START UP COMPANIES IN AFRICA’ aims at blending communication, content and commerce to create Africa’s most useful technology aggregation company.

Kokomlemle, Accra, Ghana – SMSGH, a leading brand in mobile communications and content aggregation, has once again taken a giant step towards becoming the most useful technology aggregation company in Africa as it today announced the finalization of agreements with MTN Ghana to provide call center support for the latter’s innovative Directory Assistance Service.

This engagement will see SMSGH host, manage, operate, and aggregate the MTN 1188 directory service from its newly-opened call center at 302 Olympics Road in Kokomlemle, Accra, Ghana.

The call center currently has the capacity to process more than 680 calls per hour with additional scalable capacity for more than 2,700 calls per hour.

The MTN 1188 Directory Assistance Service is available for subscribers on the MTN Ghana network. Through this dial-in service, MTN subscribers have the on-the-go convenience of accessing phone numbers and general contact details of over 85,000 listed organizations, institutions, and companies by simply dialing 1188.

Calls are processed by live operators who are available from 6am to 9pm (GMT). In addition to automated voice readout of a desired contact number, subscribers also receive an SMS with the name and number of a listing within seconds; enabling storage for future use.

The directory represents a rich repository of local businesses categorized by industry, location and other specifications.

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MTN Ghana is operated by Scancom Limited and is the leading mobile network operator in Ghana with over 11 million subscribers.

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SMSGH remains Ghana’s leading mobile value-added-services company with services and applications in use by more than 5 million mobile subscribers. The company aims at blending communication, content, and commerce to create Africa’s most useful technology aggregation company.

Kokomlemle, Accra, Ghana — SMSGH, one of Africa’s fastest-growing technology companies today announced the availability of the SMSGH Unity Portal to enable all customers and resellers to seamlessly manage their products, services, and accounts with SMSGH.

SMSGH Unity Portal hosted at unity.smsgh.com, comes in handy for the direct customer base of more than 40,000 users aggregating various mobile services via SMSGH.

The new portal offers all customers, among many other features, the ability to send SMS text messages in a far shorter time and more intuitively than available in other applications.

Other features include:

• Manage assigned short codes; set up new keywords, integrate to third-party applications (polls, games, text-to-win, betting, etc.), self-administer message processing parameters, and view payout revenues in real-time.
• Manage contact databases; set up contact groups and subscriber lists
• Manage developer APIs; both for one-way and two-way messaging to SMS-enable any application.
• Manage sub-accounts and products; create and manage other user accounts and accounts on MYtxtBOX and MYtxtBOX Pro. 1-click to impersonate sub-accounts and share SMS Credits with them.
• Manage your invoices and receipts; generate invoices and pay online instantly via Electronic Debit Card or Mobile Money and more.
• Generate detailed traffic reports; get advanced reports of all messages on your account or download to MS Excel
• Set account notification preferences

Before the introduction of the SMSGH Unity Portal, many customer processes were managed by specific products, and customers had to rely on manual procedures to administer one or more services.

As Ghana’s largest provider of SMS messaging and aggregation services, SMSGH continues to leverage customer behavior and experiences in using the SMSGH Unity Portal to develop a solid business model for expansion into other markets around the world.

Announcing the release, the Chief Solutions Architect, Mr. Kwadwo Seinti said, “The more customers we are able to seamlessly assist with very little person-to-person interaction, the more solid our expansion becomes.”

An event to launch and present the key features of the SMSGH Unity Portal will take place sometime in the 3rd quarter of 2012.

Kokomlemle, Accra, Ghana — SMSGH, Ghana’s leading mobile aggregation and bulk messaging company today celebrated seven (7) years of successful business operations.

SMSGH was founded by three (3) Ghanaian technology entrepreneurs and started operations on the 12th of May 2005.

A private cake-cutting ceremony was held at the company’s Kokomlemle offices to commemorate the occasion. In attendance were all staff, management, the board of directors, and shareholders of the company. In a speech, the Chief Solutions Architect of SMSGH, Kwadwo Seinti, thanked everyone who has played any part in the company’s success, saying ‘Our success must inspire us to do more‘.

In an email sent to all staff, management congratulated all past and present SMSGH team members and reminded all that ‘From the very start this has been an experiment in how far we can go with our ideas. And we are locked in deep currently. Today, we have proved to ourselves that it’s all possible. But we’ve also learned that what lies ahead of us is ever more challenging than anything we have encountered or anticipated.‘

The email above all thanked God for bringing the company thus far, stating ‘As we celebrate our 7th anniversary, we can never ignore the ever-present, reliable hand of God in our journey — ever guiding, ever protecting; granting us strength of body, mind and wisdom each day. Do make time today to say a Thank You Prayer.‘

A representative of staff, Mr. Gideon Hayford, thanked management for maintaining strong corporate values, and for providing a conducive environment to encourage staff performance.

SMSGH aims to become an international brand for business messaging and content aggregation developing and deploying mobile solutions to enrich lives and lifestyles.