Different companies partnering with the National Social Security Fund on its smart card loyalty program, say it hasn’t yet yielded significant business as had been anticipated.
In July, NSSF in partnership with Centenary Bank, launched a three-in-one smart card, from which the fund’s savers can access merchandise from partnering merchants at discounted prices.
Information from the fund, indicates that since it launch, 8,000 savers out of over 370,000 active accounts, have picked interest in the card, technology, and the usage level is 60 percent of the card holders.
Though the card has been available for up to six months, the merchant companies who are partnering with the fund to move their goods through this program are yet to see any significant impact from it.
Most of these merchants are dealers in real estate and construction materials, and this was a deliberate selection, because the according to NSSF, most members use their benefits in construction projects.
From separate telephone interviews, some of the merchants URN talked to, though still optimistic about the program, indicated that not much has been yielded yet.
Mark Rwomushana from Uganda Clays Limited, says that as a company, they are still have hopeful that the program will catch on among savers, if more awareness about it is created. To him, the only missing link is the program awareness among the savers.
According to Rwomushana, about 6 costumers have transacted with them using this card since it was unveiled, but they look at this program as an avenue which can fetch a lot of customers to the company.
“The awareness has not been so much, but when it catches on, and many people use the card, we expect to get many customers than we could with out a discount,” he said. “Since it was launched, we have so far received about six customers using the card, buying tiles worth 70 million shillings.”
Winnie Nakimuli from Buildnet company, declined to disclose the numbers, but said that they have received some customers from this program, however, the numbers are not yet attractive.
Nakimuli says that Buildnet as a company, looks at this program as an opportunity to increase their customer base, and that is how they are still viewing it.
“We look at this as one of the avenues through which we shall get customers, and the discount is that part of the profit we could have put into advertisement, which explains why we give the discount,” Nakimuli says.
Worthy to note is that this card is not access to your savings, unless you have attained the retirements benefits maturity age. The same card can be used as a debit card for prepaid transactions, it can do online transactions, and also normal ATM services.
To boost the performance of this card, NSSF and the different merchants convened a media briefing, at their offices in Kampala.
Patrick Ayota the NSSF deputy managing director also acting as managing director, said that they’re working on an improvement where a card holder will only need to swipe at the point of sale machine, and the transaction is done.
