[Question] Where are the shops buying their airtime from? How much discount?

[Miro Bagrov]

There is an unspoken moment with airtime - how do the shops buy theirs?
Some are printed on request, others pre-sealed.
If you smoke, then you know that buying bulk will save you money. However, we spend more on communication than on cigarettes and alcohol. It is important to find a bulk source.

who has information about this?

[Justloadit]

Hi Miro,

Can I help?
What do you want to do?

I buy bulk airtime and save the stock on a server, using our locally manufactured terminals, you dispense the airtime by printing a paper voucher with a PIN number on it.

You can also use your cellphone, by registering on *120*72735#, depositing money into our account, and use your cellphone number a s a reference. You can then vend airtime using your cellphone, when a sale is made, the PIN number appears on your screen with which you give to the buyer.

But the cost at the moment when using your cellphone to make the sale is 20c, however in the new year we have negotiated with MTN for a free service, improving the profit you make on a sale using your cell phone.

[Newretailer]

If you have a credit card facility with Capitec (don't know about other banks), you can automatically sell airtime. I can't tell you at what price, as I didn't take it up.

[Miro Bagrov]

Thanks for the reply. I will investigate on Capitec. We all know checkers offers already a 5% discount which is a clean discount if there are no transaction costs.

What discount can you offer me? If I can make my own printing arrangements, what can you offer me for the inventory?

[Justloadit]

Thanks for the reply. I will investigate on Capitec. We all know checkers offers already a 5% discount which is a clean discount if there are no transaction costs.

What discount can you offer me? If I can make my own printing arrangements, what can you offer me for the inventory?

Be wary of looking at the large retailers and the discounts they offer. On many occasions they are purchasing the sale by offering the discounts. They require to to purchase a certain amount monthly to maintain their annuity income on the SIM cards they have sold, and one way is to buy the sales by offering the discounts they do.

Whilst many people buy at these retailers, the majority of customers never go near the retailers, and require to top up where they live.

I'am not in the office till January 2012, so I do not have the discounts handy, I will post when I am back in the office.

At the end of the day, it is not so much the discount that is important, but rather how much effort must I put in to get a sale. The majority of the airtime sales comes from a customer buying other groceries, and then buys the airtime. If you do not sell the airtime, you lose the sale of the groceries, which is where your largest profit comes from.

Don't kid yourself with trying to set up your own printing systems, by the time you have all the equipment, you literally have to print thousands of vouchers a day to make the returns, which means to get any meaningful sales you have to compete with suppliers who have been there for years.

Good luck in your venture.

[wesellairtime]

Buy airtime in bulk

There is an unspoken moment with airtime - how do the shops buy theirs?
Some are printed on request, others pre-sealed.
If you smoke, then you know that buying bulk will save you money. However, we spend more on communication than on cigarettes and alcohol. It is important to find a bulk source.

who has information about this?

You can buy airtime at whole sale prices and draw by selling to your self or friends or customer at www.goairtime.co.za without spending a cent on setting up if you already have access to internet. You can even sell to distant people

[Justloadit]

You can buy airtime at whole sale prices and draw by selling to your self or friends or customer at www.goairtime.co.za without spending a cent on setting up if you already have access to internet. You can even sell to distant people

So what discount do you give?
Do you charge cash deposit fee?
If you select the SMS option, what does it cost you?

[Dave A]

When I read that post 6 in the moderation queue, I was wondering whether to can as spam or let it through.
And then I thought "Justloadit's going to love it "

I guess we'll find out wesellairtime's credibility soon enough.

[Justloadit]

Found the discount after looking again at the site, top right hand corner - they reckon 5% across the board, does that also mean ESKOM?

How do I avoid the cash deposit fees?

Do an internet transfer (EFT) into our account rather than depositing cash. EFT is totally free of charge. If we are charged cash deposit fees by the bank we recover these by deducting the same value from your Airtime account with us.

Is there anything else I need to know?

Yes, never pay two identical amounts into our bank account on the same day or consecutive days. A second deposit can be bigger or smaller than the first deposit (even a few cents difference), but must never be identical or it will be ignored by our system.

What they don't tell you is that when you deposit cash into your own account, you pay a lot more than 1.5%
Fancy also that you must not deposit the same amount on the same day or 2 consecutive days. What automated system have they got that will get confused if you deposit the same amount?

This market is really getting over traded now.

[MightyMomo]

Found the discount after looking again at the site, top right hand corner - they reckon 5% across the board, does that also mean ESKOM?



What they don't tell you is that when you deposit cash into your own account, you pay a lot more than 1.5%
Fancy also that you must not deposit the same amount on the same day or 2 consecutive days. What automated system have they got that will get confused if you
deposit the same amount?

This market is really getting over traded now.

With regards to legality, would it be okay for me to print my own airtime with codes from online suppliers and sell to local shops with my own printing designs ?

[Justloadit]

With regards to legality, would it be okay for me to print my own airtime with codes from online suppliers and sell to local shops with my own printing designs ?

Yes you can, but this market has changed substantially from the early days, and the discounts have dropped further from the time of the last post.

I have discontinued this business, as it was just no longer profitable.
The business has changed so much that every cash/sales point now sells prepaid. They do not even care that they only make 1or 1.5%. What they are looking for is to get customers intro their establishments to buy the other higher priced goods. Any one now who has cellphone banking can buy prepaid direct from their banking app. Why should they by a voucher from a shop down the road?

Only the very big players, or anyone thinking about getting into this business will require 7 to 8 figure cash amounts to be able to even start negotiating with each the networks(MTN,Vodacom, Cell C, Telkom, ESKOm and each individual municipality), then you have to compete with all the banks, all retailers, Glocell and Blue Label Telecoms to name a few to get into the business. Never mind the cost of marketing, equipment and other running costs to maintain a 24/7 business. Another point to remember is that there is no credit. All purchases are prepaid, even directly from the network. In the case of the big players, they use guarantees when they purchase the bulk prepaid stock.

Another point with prepaid electricity, with some municipalities, you do not get a discount on the sale of prepaid, but get a fixed rate of 70c or something per transaction. So the cash deposit fee for outstrips your bottom line.

[PlatinumWealth.co.za]

Oh wow did not even know of this thread.

That's our business.

100% correct, that airtime space has changed incredibly in the last years.

For bulk airtime (Resellers) we have Fiverand.co.za

For Point-of-Sale airtime, till points and tuck shops we have http://www.whitelabel.co.za

Then another business model is to buy a website like goairtime.co.za myprepaidairtime.co.za etc and then you earn commissions based on the usage of your website.

So entirely passive income you market your site we take care of the airtime system and delivery and you get a distributor report at the end of each month and get paid the commission.

For more serious businesses and also where we focus on the most is own integrated services using our API. That is what justloadit is refering to in the above post we sell volumes and that is what the API is for most large shops use that to integrate into their existing system. We are essentially a airtime vendor and offer businesses an API and also pinless vouchers so they can build their own airtime platforms.

Https://airtimefactory.co.za list all the services

[PlatinumWealth.co.za]

Fancy also that you must not deposit the same amount on the same day or 2 consecutive days. What automated system have they got that will get confused if you deposit the same amount?

This market is really getting over traded now.

This was exploited via people so the reason we do that is because the bank teller often makes a mistake and capture the same amount twice the client will then get two SMSes from the bank and go spend that money they won't tell us about it and at the end of the day the bank reverses that payment when they balances up. So if it genuinely is the same amount we ask users to prove it to us by changing the amount so if you deposit 5000 and you want to deposit money again within 48 hours the deposit 5000.50 or 5000.10 to avoid the duplicate payment flag.

[rajen.naicker@telkomsa.ne]

Can you tell me where I can buy sealed vouchers at discounted prices for wholesaling to retailers

[PlatinumWealth.co.za]

Can you tell me where I can buy sealed vouchers at discounted prices for wholesaling to retailers

http://Fiverand.co.za

That is the bulk sealed vouchers.

(https://Freepaid.co.za is the parent company.)