Following a rigorous User Acceptance Test (UAT), five leading Solar Home Systems companies—Azuri Technologies, A Solar, Oolu Solar, Smarter Grid International (SGI) and Sosai Renewable Energy Company—were successfully integrated into Swifta’s 20,000+ strong cash collection agent network. The integration would ease subscription collection from unbanked Pay As You Go (PAYGO) customers.

The six-week integration was financed and project managed by The Nigeria Off-grid Market Acceleration Program (NOMAP), a market building program jointly supported by the Shell Foundation and USAID. NOMAP is focused on implementing high-impact initiatives that address the current payment difficulties faced by Solar Home Systems (SHS) companies, especially with regards to collection from unbanked customers.

Now, a PAYGO customer from any of the five newly on-boarded companies can renew their subscription through Swifta’s mobile or static cash collection agents. This further makes the system more seamless, making subscription easier and giving more off-grid homes access to electricity.

“Unbanked customers who live off the grid often face the arduous task of the inability to access Pay As You Go Solar since there are limited options to pay for their monthly subscriptions. Thanks to the integration into Swifta’s agent network, PAYGO customers can now seamlessly pay for their monthly subscription through cash collection agents,” says Adedotun Eyinade, NOMAP’s program manager.

Through the pilot, NOMAP will gradually tackle the challenges associated with Nigeria’s low mobile money uptake which makes it difficult for unbanked customers to pay for Solar unlike their peers in East Africa.

“We hope that these five companies that we have partnered with on the integration will be able to expand into new off-grid communities since collection risk will be addressed by this integration,” Adedotun added.

NOMAP will collect and report evidence of improvement in sales, churn, default rate, customer experience and energy access to the unserved.

About Swifta

Swifta is an information technology company that offers a wide range of professional IT services and products. Swifta’s business strategy provides expert managed services, integration, development services to clients as well as the provision of viable and scalable enterprise software solutions with a focus on delivering exceptional services clients. Swifta’s proprietary platform, called OmniBranches, manages a 20,000-strong agent network for last mile collection.

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