This month, Orange Botswana announced through a public notice that Orange Money, the network provider's 10-year old mobile financial services provider, is to be housed under a separate entity incorporated as "Orange Money (PTY) Ltd".
According to the notice, Orange Money (PTY) Ltd was formally recognized as a licenced Electronic Payment Services Provide by the country's central bank,Bank of Botswana in March of 2020. Seabelo Pilane is to assume the role of Chief Executive Officer of the subsidiary.
This move by Orange Botswana Group follows the central bank's imposition of regulations in January 2020 which stated that telecommunication service providers like Orange must separate their mobile financial payment services from other services by creating separate companies to house the mobile financial payment services.
Other regulations imposed by the Bank of Botswana include requirements for mobile money subsidiaries to have a minimum capital of P2 million pula and comply with the country's anti-money laundering legislation. Transaction limits were also included in the regulations. A single mobile money transaction cannot exceed P5000.00. A daily transaction limit of P10 000 and a monthly one of P20 000 have also been introduced.
Orange Money is the country's leading mobile phone-based payment service, boosting over 752 000 customers. It allows customers to carry out simple banking operations and transactions without the need for a bank account. Some operations offered by the service include cash deposits, cash withdrawals, utility payments, etc.
It is followed in popularity by Mascom's MyZaka which has over 400 000 customers.