Moya Messenger (from Datafree) unveiled its e-wallet platform, MoyaPayD, with a soft launch towards the beginning of July this year. Since then, it’s seen some significant growth, having amassed a user-base 100 000 people strong in under 3 months, and it’s now launching officially.

Moya ways to pay

The messaging platform’s key selling point is that it’s data-free, meaning that you don’t have to spend a single megabyte of your rather pricey mobile data to use it, and PayD is exactly the same. This makes it particularly attractive to users who can’t afford to throw money at expensive data packages.

Moya began as a messaging app but has evolved to include features such as a marketplace, news service and now e-wallet. The messenger app itself has around 6 and a half million monthly users, which in part explains the pretty rapid growth of its e-wallet platform.

“MoyaPayD is the next step in the evolution of services to this vital market and opens the opportunities for users to engage with services they would have traditionally had to pay cash for,” says Datafree CEO Gour Lentell.

“Similar to the WeChat model in China, MoyaPayD brings a new dimension to Moya giving users a fully integrated and digitally inclusive way to interact with the services they need, without having to leave the application.”

PayD has a number of particularly handy uses, such as a merchants and payroll service, payments for subscription content and, recently, a classifieds feature. More features like these are apparently in the works, too.

If you’re interested in using the platform now that it’s been released in earnest, here’s how that works. You can sign up using an SA ID or passport, or a work permit. Once you’ve verified your account, you’re A for away, set up with a personal QR code for you to make transactions with.

MoyaPayD supports services from Capitec, Standard Bank, Absa, FNB, Nedbank, RMB, Zapper and SPOT Money, with more options on the way, and is available on the Google Play Store and Huawei App Gallery.