Safaricom’s new M-Pesa app has been dubbed a “super app” because of one key feature: it allows app developers to publish their apps so that they can be used within it. Basically, as apps within an app.
At launch 2 months ago, the new M-Pesa app boasted of a few apps in its Discover section, where these “apps within an app” can be found. There was BuuPass, a bus-booking app, the first-ever app meant for booking Kenya’s Madaraka Express train and a handful of other apps, mostly for the service industry and utilities like home gas delivery.
These mini-apps, as Safaricom was calling them at launch, were to be available on both the consumer-centred version of the M-Pesa application as well as the M-Pesa for Business app. The latter didn’t have them at launch. While we cannot confirm if the business app has finally received mini-apps as promised, we have been enjoying the ones on the consumer app for since then and now there’s a new addition: DStv.
The satellite TV service DStv has had an application it has been pushing to its users for months since a rebrand forced it to rethink its app portfolio, renaming the DStv Now app we have previously covered to just DStv and offering another ‘DStv’ app dubbed MyDStv that subscribers of the service can use to change subscription packages (upgrade, downgrade) and pay/renew their subscriptions when they are due.
It is this MyDStv app that has been availed on the M-Pesa app this week as one of the mini-apps, making it easier for users to access it and pay for their subscriptions from within the M-Pesa app without the need to remember the PayBill number and whatnot and doing other things like changing their subscription packages on the fly without having to load a browser page or using the shortcode service. Even better, they don’t need to waste space on their devices downloading the app standalone via the Play Store.
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