@Ako,
Being on the lower end does not give one a right not to use his head.Think.If i found myself in need of credit worth 5 bob or 10,why walk all the way to the kiosk while i can borrow 45 bob from MJ....................??......and then move to YU without repaying.......hell yes.

Old man about town....

I think its meant to target the 'kadogo economy' like in kibera where people people buy one spoonful of cooking fat,sugar,tea leaves etc just to survive.But the economics of producing a ksh 5.00 scratch card does not seem viable.Lets hope MJ has done proper research.

cheap is expensive.you cant talk with five shilling unless you want to leave the other guy in suspense.

instead of introducing bamba 5 why can't they reduce calling rates.5bob you cannot call for a minute afadhali YU u can call for a minute with 5bob to any network . safcom wamepatikana......

Sh 5/500cents @ 80cents a min gives you 6.25 min of talk time.

The thicker the thigh the sweeter the pie.

May be they were thinking of messages like below which you can convey with 5 shillings call

'Ni pigie'
'nimefika stage'
'stima imekatwa'
'kuja na maziwa'
'Mtoto amepotea'

the first two e.g for young lovers and the others probably coming from your housegal at home.

Someone may have put some thought in it... may be what they didnt consider(among others) is the increased trips to the kiosk.

Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.

@leona and sheep...you have pointed out two key issues - environmental and cost. And with everyone's indulgence,I;d like to look at these objectively (indeed I have gone to Firefox in order to use bullet points....and pls forget for a minute that I am anti-scom).



Cost - Sheep,aside from the obvioius cost of the card (printing,paper,security features for the PIN)....MJ is as good as taking food away from scom scracth card sellers....whereas Wafula in Kangemi knew he would sell at least 10 cards of 50bob per day (and make a meagre 5% margin),now his customers are no longer compelled to buy the 50 card but will buy the lowest they can for a particular time. Meanwhile,the corporate monster,through about 5 distributors,has pre-sold millions of shillings of airtime - literally millions per hour. For real or my real name is Passat Ocampo Omollo.
Environmental - we have seen,how all mobile companies scratch cards are proportionately smaller by the value. I;d like to think the 5 bob and 10 bob cards still need a 12 digit code - essentially there is no way the card could become smaller than the 50 bob strip - unless of course they use a smaller font size - like in a bible. So,whereas they used to print 1 card of 50 - now we will have 10 cards of 5 bob. Suppose we say,HYPOTHETICALLY speaking,that it takes one tree a day to print x number of 50 bob scratch cards,it will now take 10 trees a day to print 10x number of 5bob scratch cards. That is not counting the additional environmental burden in terms of chemicals to print and of course the litter (BTW EABL has a paper recycler who collects 5 tonnes of washed off beer labels per day! I;d like to think there are more scratch card users than there are beer drinkers - so for all mobile operators,it could be even as high as 30 tonnes a day of scracth cards).


I have always maintained SCOM is to capitalistic and despite the existence of the SCOM foundation and all that CSR,you,the WORKING Kenyan individual,are not in its heart. One cannot say the same for Equity Bank,Coop Bank,Bidco,etc - these are companies with a human face who are responsive and understand people.

One last parting shot - which also explains how cold hearted and utilitarian Safaricom is - and please indulge me. Elsewhere in SK I wrote about how they eagerly rolled out Simu ya Jamii - many Kenyans felt it would be a lifeline and invested anything between 25k-30k on the device. then the big green giant lowered tariffs and introduced the 50 bob card. Kenyans had no longer any reason to use Simu ya Jamii and those who had invested were left with hardware they could not use.

Now,the same dealer is being pushed against the wall to increase volumes while getting the same margins. Don't pay heed to the promotion they have for dealers....pay it as much attention as you would the Ongea tariff.

@Leona you are right - the green giant is against the wall and acting in desperation - this is just another 'hit and miss' strategy....Yu imetanda,Zain iko popote ulipo,Orange...haki yenu!

My two zain shillings.

The problem with equality is that we desire that it be with those that have more than us rather that those that have less