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Wednesday, February 8, 2023 –Bonga data bundles which have never been expiring, will now lose value after seven days. Safaricom has announced.
In its push to force use of the Bonga points, the Kenyan telco has made the policy changes which it had promised to implement last year.
The internet data bought by Bonga points have been a big liability to the giant telco as users have not been using with the speed required despite accumulation.
Therefore, Bonga data bundles will have a timeline of strictly seven days after purchase; what will now force subscribers to hurry the consumption.
Business Daily did some research on the new development and established that Data redemptions on the telco’s Bonga points USSD platform, in the meantime, are indicating that Bonga data purchases, ranging from 80 MB to one Gigabyte, expire effective midnight on the day of the purchase.
Additionally, Airtime and talk-time minutes’ redemptions have a validity period of 7 (seven) days, while SMS redemptions have an expiry window of between 24 hours and 30 days, depending on the units redeemed.
“The data bundles purchased will be valid for seven (7) days after which any unused resources will expire and will no longer be available for use,” the telco’s new terms and conditions indicated.
The move by the Safaricom to cap the life of the Bonga resources reflects the recent push by the company to encourage subscribers to use up their loyalty points.
The value of outstanding or unredeemed points has been going up over the years —hitting sh 4.5 billion in March 2022 from sh 3 billion in 2015.
This is despite the company expanding the options for redemption to include the merchant payments through its Lipa na M-Pesa and Paybill options, and purchase of plane tickets.
Safaricom allowed users to dial USSD number *123# bonga deal offers to convert Bonga points into cash for payments.
This said, however, the valuation of Bonga points has not been consistent over the years, with the worth of each loyalty point varying depending on the merchandise or non-merchandise items being redeemed.
