Wallenje.com is a new a mobile wallet app that allows consumers to ditch their loyalty cards, accept change, pay for transactions, claim and save coupons, purchase or transfer vouchers, receive offer and promotions from their favourite merchants and manage their bill payments from one app.
Set to be launched in Beta this month, Ondieki Obare CEO Wallenje said he came up with the idea after shopping at a retail store and realizing he had left his wallet at home.
“On checkout, I had no loyalty card to get my prized points and it just luck that i had some cash on me but it became worse when they gave me candies instead of loose change. Obare says. “I lost 4 shillings and just thought If I lost 4 shillings a week every time, four times a week to four different retailers I shopped with in exchange for candy, for 5 years($0.03); I would have lost close to 17,000 shillings!($200), money enough to buy him a cheap Tablet or smartphone.”
Obare therefore decided to do some research and he says he realized small businesses find it hard to offer loyalty programmes because they are expensive for them and everyone was bound to forget their loyalty cards at one time in life but not their smartphones.
Obare and team therefore decided to develop and app to eliminate wallets as a functional accessory and totally reduce it to a fashion accessory. Wallanje works simply. The firm have created apps for ordinary users and for merchants. Users can manage their loyalty programmes,pocket change, bills, vouchers and coupons from the Wallenje App.
Merchants will have an app and web interface to enable them setup and award loyalty schemes, vouchers, coupons, return pocket change and disburse bills. User can subscribe to any loyalty programme once registered into the platform.
Merchant can only access information about their subscribed users while user can accept pocket change in the form of Wallenje.
It can be used to purchase goods and services(e.g cabs and matatus) from any merchant in the platform(it can’t be withdrawn/transferable) or donated to favorite causes. Merchants can award coupons and vouchers They can also announce offers/promotions. Users can purchase voucher balances via APIs such as from banks, credit cards and mobile money e.g MPESA, ECOCASH among others.