If you have been holding out on trying out some of the latest movies, television series, documentaries and more, then this will probably tempt you. There’s a way to get all those for an entire year for… just Ksh 1 000. Yes, that’s right, Ksh 1 000.
This is possible by exploiting one of the offerings of streaming video on demand service Showmax.
For a while now, Showmax has been running a promotion whereby subscribers can pay just Ksh250 for a 3-month subscription. Normally, that would cost Ksh 2 640 (i.e. a Showmax subscription costs Ksh 880 per month. Multiply that by 3 to arrive at 2 640). So those who have taken advantage of this offer so far have saved Ksh 2 390.
But there is the potential to save even more than that. An annual subscription to Showmax would cost Ksh10 560 if you paid the full subscription of Ksh880 per month. But did you know that you can pay just under a tenth of this with a simple hack?
Follow these steps keenly:
1. Go to M-PESA on your phone and pay Ksh 250 to Showmax four times
In all, you will have spent Ksh1 000.
That is all that you need to get a full year subscription and, therefore, access to over 35 000 movies, TV shows, kids’ shows and documentaries in high definition (HD).
You can also download up to 25 pieces of video content (movies, TV shows) for viewing later while offline on your device of choice.
Here’s how to go about it. (I used the mySafaricom application but you can use the SIM toolkit on your mobile device. Use whatever is convenient for you.)
- Go to M-Pesa.
- Select Lipa na M-Pesa.
- Select Paybill.
- Enter the Showmax Business Number: 852552.
- Enter your account number… this is your mobile phone number (for the phone that is attached to your Showmax account).
- Enter the amount Ksh 250.
- Confirm that it is all good (the beauty of using the app is that you get to clearly see the finer details i.e. transaction costs, if any, and, most importantly, the name of the recipient).
- Authorise the deduction of Ksh 250 from your M-Pesa account by keying in your M-Pesa PIN.
- Wait for the confirmation message from M-Pesa indicating that Ksh 250 has been deducted from your M-Pesa account and sent to Showmax. Additionally, you will also get another message, via email, from Showmax informing you that a payment had been made. The same email will also tell you the updated subscription date.
- Repeat this process three more times. In other words, you need to do this four times in total – because there are four three-month periods in one year. (In my case, since I had already redeemed my first 3 months just last month, I only made a total of 3 such payments to make sure that my subscription lasts all the way to October 2018).
Note that this can be done by those who are new to Showmax as well as those who are existing subscribers, like yours truly, for instance. If you’re new to Showmax, sign up here: www.showmax.com before following the above steps.
2. Confirm that your subscription has been extended for a year
While Showmax will send confirmation emails after every Ksh 250 payment is made and the last of such emails will show the correct expiry date of your subscription, the same information can always be obtained from your account data. This can be accessed by going to Profile > My Account > Manage Subscription when you’re logged in on showmax.com.
Note that this can only be done through showmax.com and not any of the mobile apps or the Showmax app available on smart TV sets from the likes of Samsung (Tizen), LG (webOS), Sony (Android TV), Philips (Android TV) and others.
