Timpa, A Gadget That Replaces Airtime Cards

Whether for people who are tired of scratching airtime cards or simply trying to figure out a better solution to keep their cell phone always ready to talk, the African manufacturer Psitek Communications has announced a wireless device that comes with an integrated SIM card enabling subscribers to get airtime anytime without needing a physical card to scratch. Although in many countries it is possible buy airtime by means of an ATM of loading airtime online with funds of a credit or debit card, this option is not available for a large number of cell phone owners around the world, mostly people under pay-as-you-go plans or free plans that require an airtime scratch card to add electronic airtime to their devices.

Ryan Callis, Psitek Head of East Africa Region said “Scratch cards are an unnecessary headache and there is a global trend to phase them out.”  With Timpa a telecommunication solution similar to the Rica, Jembi, and Adondo payphones, vendors can sell airtime using an electronic feed.

The concept behind Timpa is provide vendors with bank accounts where they can deposit money for as many airtime as they want loaded into a device. This airtime can be sold in small amounts to mobile subscribers and Timpa will then provide a receipt for the total amount of airtime each one purchases.

Psitek has already partnered with Celtel and Safaricom, service providers who will sell to the company bulk quantities of airtime to be stored in Psitek’s server to guarantee not only airtime supplies but real time process of every deposit received from a vendor using a patent system in agreement with banks, monitors incoming and outgoing transactions every ten minutes.

Scanning those transactions, Psited will be able to determine which vendor requires more airtime adjusting its stock accordingly, although they are just planning to start a two-year trial service before deploying the system throughout the African country.

Although Psitek keeps a realistic perspective of the market in the knowledge that people is too familiar with scratch cards to load airtime into their mobile device. Even though, the company is confident to increase the acceptation of Timpa as people understand how electronic loading works and find in this system a more efficient way to keep talking regardless they have an airtime scratch card or not.

Questioned about the success of the project Ryan Callis said “We anticipate that 50 per cent of airtime in the country would be sold electronically by June next year.”

Despite the release of Timpa is of regional importance, Psitek’s proposal is a model to follow for other countries in which electronic airtime loading is a service not yet available. In Africa, Callis procrastinates that it will take about five years to make scratch cards an obsolete airtime loading method.

Trial of the Timpa service are ready to go in Tanzania after the success of electronic airtime funding in Angola, Malawi, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo where this alternative service is been already used.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 10:32 pm and is filed under Gadget Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.