mSurvey and Safaricom to Track Kenya's Offline Spend

In Africa, mobile-first messaging platform mSurvey and comms company Safaricom have partnered to launch a solution called Consumer Wallet, which quantifies Kenyan consumers' off-line spending, habits and trends.

The Safaricom service enables consumers to pay for goods and services daily through their phones, while mSurvey's mobile research platform uses SMS and mobile messaging technology to access data from the emerging world. Currently in beta, the partners' new Consumer Wallet provides a live data feed which uses mSurvey's platform to track and measure Keyna's 'cash economy' over time, and provide insight into the spending habits of off-line consumers. The platform allows the two companies to have daily conversations with individual consumers, and ask simple questions about spending behaviour which are sent as chats to the mobile phones of millions of consumers.

Bob Collymore, CEO of Safaricom, says traditionally it would take extensive in-person questionnaires or physical diaries to obtain the kind of data provided by the new service. mSurvey co-founder and CEO Kenfield Griffith adds: 'By perpetually engaging in intimate conversations with consumers, we are able to understand their everyday spending journeys and uncover powerful trends. For example, the product highlighted that in January 2017, rent went from 10% to 19% of the wallet, and school fees from 8% to 16% compared to 2016. Such key insights allow a deeper dive into the drivers of the change'.

Web sites: www.msurvey.co.ke and www.safaricom.co.ke .