What you need to know about Safaricom Bonga points expiry

Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa. [Wilberforce Okwiri, Standard]

Safaricom subscribers will lose any unused Bonga points obtained before December 2019 as the company moves to mop up over Sh4 billion in loyalty points.

This is according to a leaked draft copy of upcoming changes in the firm's terms and conditions for its Bonga points loyalty scheme that contributed Sh4.5 billion of the firm's liability stock in the last financial year.

"Effective 1st January 2023, all non-redeemable Bonga points older than three years (December 2019) will expire and will be unavailable for redemption," stated the updated terms and conditions.

"This is a permanent implementation where Bonga points accrued will now have a validity period to enable customers to redeem points."

Safaricom said this was a business decision aimed at encouraging Bonga redemption and customers will not be able to reinstate their expired points.

Bonga points is a loyalty scheme for all Safaricom PrePay and PostPay subscribers where they earn one Bonga point for every Sh10 spent on voice calls, short message service (SMS), data and M-Pesa services.

Enterprise Business customers also earn loyalty points upon achievement of their revenue targets and the accumulated amounts are redeemable upon maturity of the underlying revenue contracts set with Safaricom.

The points can be redeemed for rewards ranging from minutes of talk time, data bundles, MMSs and SMS bundles or by payments made through Till and select Pay Bill numbers. For example, a subscriber with 100 Bonga points is eligible to redeem 30 minutes of airtime, 7 minutes of talk time, or up to 1,000 SMSs.

As of the last financial year loyalty points earned by Safaricom customers stood at Sh4.5 billion, up from Sh4.2 billion in the previous year.

Earlier this year Safaricom launched the Pamoja Tuungane campaign, an initiative to complement the Government's initiatives in tackling famine. Subscribers were invited to join in the program by donating their Bonga points to purchase food hampers for distribution to the communities hardest hit.

AT A GLANCE
o Bonga points older than three years will expire on January 1, 2023
o Lipa na Bonga Points transaction irreversible once points expire
o Loyalty programme, "Bonga Points", introduced in January 2007
o Every Sh. 10 generates 1 bonga point
o 1 bonga point = Sh. 0.20
o 5 bonga points = Sh. 1.00
o To get 5 Bonga points customers spend Sh. 50
o So every Sh. 50 generates Sh. 1 worth of Bonga points
o Safaricom says it holds Sh. 4.5 Billion in unredeemed Bonga points
o Estimated number of unredeemed Bonga points is 22.5 billion
o Safaricom has 42.44 Million Customers

Source: Safaricom
Compiled by Ronald Bett, Henry Githaiga | The Standard CHECKPOINT