Company News
MTN is Recognised as Most Admired Telecom Brand in Uganda
Image sourced from Pinterest. MTN has been recognised as the Most Admired Telecom Brand in Uganda by Brands Africa in the 2020 Africa’s Best Brands Survey which is conducted across 27 countries on the continent. “This award is an endorsement of our efforts towards keeping every Ugandan connected,” says Joseph Bogera, MTN Uganda’s GM of Sales and Distribution. “I would like to thank all our customers and communities for the trust that they have shown in us. It encourages us to work harder every day to deliver on our belief that everyone deserves the benefits of modern connected life.” MTN reaches 100 million active user milestone MTN Uganda’s announcement comes hot on the heels of the group’s overall impressive performance across the African continent. Just last week, MTN Group a...
Mark Zuckerberg Down $7 Billion as Huge Companies Continue to Boycott Facebook
Image sourced from Inc Facebook’s stock price is being hammered by a massive boycott of the social media giant’s major advertisers. CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s personal wealth is also feeling the brunt of the stand-off. As of Saturday last week, Zuckerberg’s net wealth is down around $7 billion, while Facebook’s share price dropped by more than 8% at the close of trading on Friday. Advertising is Facebook’s largest source of income, with the company making $17.4 billion in ad sales alone in the first three months of 2020. Coca-Cola Backs #StopHateforProfit /* custom css */ .tdi_3_83f.td-a-rec-img{ text-align: left; }.tdi_3_83f.td-a-rec-img img{ margin: 0 auto 0 0; } Soft-drink juggernaut Coca-Cola is one of the latest brands to halt all of its social media advertising, backing the #StopHateforPr...
TymeBank is Recognised as One of South Africa’s Top 3 Digital Banks
Image sourced from Business Tech Only 18 months after launching, TymeBank has been rated as one of the top three digital banks in South Africa by SITEisfaction. This recognition follows on the recent Forbes accolade, which claimed TymeBank as the 2nd best bank in the country its high levels of customer satisfaction and key qualities like trust, banking fees, digital services and financial advice. In the latest report, which measures customer satisfaction with digital banking services, TymeBank was recognised for the bank’s user-friendliness, safety features and affordability. The latter was particularly appreciated by those who had recently switched, with the majority saying they switched because of the bank’s extremely low transaction fees and market-leading high-interest rates on all sav...
OneDayOnly Records 40% Growth during Lockdown
Sourced from IOL. Unlike anything the world has seen before, the COVID-19 pandemic fuelled a sudden digital surge that catapulted both global and local eCommerce traffic to unprecedented levels. The closest comparable example – while on a much smaller geographical scale – would be the 2003 SARS crisis, which is today recognised as kickstarting Alibaba’s eCommerce success in Asia. This is according to Matthew Leighton, spokesperson from OneDayOnly.co.za, who notes the accelerant role that COVID-19 and the ensuing lockdown has played in boosting eCommerce uptake across South Africa. “While eCommerce has been gaining gradual traction across the country over the past decade, there is no denying that COVID-19 has served as a catalyst for rapid progress in this regard. To put this level of growt...
Crossfin Transactional Solutions Rebrands To Adumo
Crossfin Transactional Solutions (CTS) has rebranded to Adumo, in an attempt to infuse the fast-growing fintech company with an authentic African feel that speaks to its existing and future customer base. Following the 2019 acquisition of Sureswipe by Crossfin Technology Holdings, a fintech investment company, and Apis Growth Fund, a private equity fund managed by London-based Apis Partners LLP, Crossfin Transactional Solutions (CTS), South Africa’s largest independent payments and merchant acquiring solutions platform was formed. 2020 will now see an authentic, local positioning of CTS to ‘Adumo’. Adumo services more than 30 000 active clients and 50 000 active card machines – processing over $4 billion in transaction value – and with a presence in 7 African countries, making it is the la...
Sony’s Music Portal Launches Two New Features for African Artists
Sony Music Entertainment Africa has just unveiled two state-of-the-art features – Real-Time Earnings and Cash-Out – that allow their artists to view and withdraw earnings faster than ever before through the Sony Music Artist Portal. In these unprecedented times where artists need immediate access to funds, the Real-Time Earnings element of the Sony Music Artist Portal is available anytime, anywhere and provides artists with immediate updates about their global earnings and account balances, while also giving them faster insights into their earnings trends. The Cash-Out element gives artists even greater control over their money by providing them with the ability to request a withdrawal of all, or part, of their payable balance, and there are no hidden fees or charges that are incurred when...
Sasol to Start Cutting Jobs in August Amid Global Oil Price Slump
Sourced from BizNews. Sasol is set to begin employee dismissals from mid-August in efforts to cut costs in a new strategy aimed at boosting its balances. This comes after the company was battered by the general decline in oil prices as a result of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. According to Fin24, in a letter to its employees dated 18 June the company says it was under considerable financial pressure and that unless stringent and emergency actions are taken, it would not survive the year. The massive petrochemical firm, employer of 31,000 people around the world, continues to estimate that its financial position will remain under “severe pressure” due to the depressed prices on oil. Based in Johannesburg, Sasol says that its “…financial position continues to be under severe pressure, esp...
INTERVIEW: Skynamo Founder on Choosing a Career in Technology
In 2013, Sam Clarke – founder and CEO of local startup, Skynamo – decided he wanted to solve a problem that had been getting in the way of business for decades. A few years later, in 2020, Skynamo went on to secure $30 million in US funding and is now putting it to good use – starting with an app that supports & protects sales field agents in the fight against COVID19. ITNA’s Jenna Delport had the opportunity to chat to Clarke, here’s what transpired: What first made you think of a career in technology?I have been a tinkerer my whole life. From a very young age, I would take things apart to see how they work – often even getting to put them back together again. I started teaching myself to write software when I was 12 years old. I wrote a few programs for friends while at high school, ...
Huawei Partners with SovTech to Develop HMS Apps
Sourced from Getty Images. Huawei has partnered with software development company, SovTech, to assist with refiguring the core services of some of South Africa’s most used mobile apps to be able to function fully on its mobile ecosystem – Huawei Mobile Services (HMS). “SovTech is responsible for developing a new Android Package File (APK) that would work on the Huawei AppGallery using only HMS integration kits. Huawei is focusing on a lot of research and development and will really challenge the status quo in terms of what we are used to in the space of mobile services offerings,” says Luke Hunt, Director of Product Advance at SovTech’s app division. To kick off the partnership with Huawei, SovTech had a codeshare agreement with Travelstart, using it as a proof of concept to demonstrate th...
LG Unveils New Tone Free Wireless Earbuds
LG has revealed two new LG Tone Free true wireless earbuds (models HBS-FN6 and HBS-FN4) – which are both said to deliver an “exceptional listening experience” thanks to Meridian Audio technology. The earbuds not only use Headphone Spatial Processing (HSP) technology from Meridian to add an extra dimension of audio but also Digital Signal Processing (DSP) to simulate the experience of listening to real loudspeakers. The LG HBS-FN6 features LG’s industry-first UVnano case which eliminates bacteria and germs on the earbuds as they charge. The new canal-type design delivers a more comfortable fit and comes in two colours: matte black and glossy white. The compact charging case provides up to an hour of listening time after a five-minute charge. Fully charged, both models provide six hours of u...
Google Will Begin to Automatically Delete User Location History by Default
Sourced from Shutterstock. Google announced that it will start to automatically delete the location history and web activity of users after an 18 month period. “We continue to challenge ourselves to do more with less, and today we’re changing our data retention practices to make auto-delete the default for our core activity settings,” Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai says in a release. Usually, users would have to manually turn this feature on, but now it seems that the search engine giant has decided to include it by default. Google will be able to keep certain amounts of information on the online activity of users and still be able to recommend websites and adverts on things you may like based on your location and browsing history, but now, they won’t have to deal with vast amounts ...
Telkom Launches Digital Marketplace App to Help Small Businesses Grow
Image sourced from My Broadband To help the growth of small businesses in South Africa, Telkom Business has launched Yep! – a digital marketplace where customers can safely and confidently search and purchase from small, trusted businesses – available on Google Play and Apple’s app store. The app is geared toward economic sustainability, creating a long-term future for small businesses. “Think of Yep! as a ‘friend’ to small businesses, as it provides a scalable solution to help grow and enhance their reach,” says Lunga Siyo, CEO of Telkom Business. “The COVID-19 pandemic has far-reaching effects, none of which paint a bright future for many businesses and even more so in South Africa where small to medium-sized enterprises form the backbone of the economy.” Yep! users can easily locate the...
