One of Africa’s largest social networks, Mxit, is integrating First National Bank’s eWallet service into Mxit Money, its mobile commerce platform, creating FNB Moola+. FNB eWallet allows any South African with a valid mobile phone to perform various financial transactions. The new solution will allow Mxit users to buy Moola, Mxit’s online currency, at discounted rates.

Mxit has around 10 million active users in South Africa, and this venture will provide another banking service with which to transact on the social network.

“One of the greatest challenges to mobile commerce is cost-effectively getting money into the system, said Alan Knott-Craig, CEO of Mxit. “Traditionally the only way to get real money into our ecosystem was to use premium-rated SMS services. This is an expensive solution and puts a lot of pressure on Mxit to provide fair value to the user while still recouping its costs. The partnership with FNB means that we can now offer our users even more value.”

"This will have a positive knock-on effect into our partner network. The more Moola our users have to spend, the better for each developer of the various games and services," he added.