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Local micro-jobbing service hits 70 000 users

Johannesburg - Internet micro-jobbing service Money for Jam (M4JAM) has surpassed 70 000 monthly active users since launching in August last year and it is now extending its payment footprint.

Locally developed M4JAM, which is available on instant messaging service WeChat, allows users to perform ‘micro-jobs’ and earn money.

The jobs range from helping navigation service TomTom to validate and create mapping data, price-checking for organisations, mystery shopping to gauge customer engagement and even helping advertising agencies test different versions of pre-flighted video ads.

Jobbers then cash out at Pick n Pay and Boxer stores. And this week, M4JAM announced that it has struck a partnership with Shoprite Checkers to allow jobbers to tap a new system that enables instant cash outs at the retailer’s over 900 outlets in SA.

In turn, M4JAM says it provides brands, business and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) with data insights from customers across South Africa.

"We've surpassed 70 000 active jobbers on a monthly basis on our platform, so that's great, the job activity is growing,” Andre Hugo, who is described as M4JAM’s ‘Chief Jammer’, told Fin24.

"We've had over I think it was 60 brands so far that have used the platform and of which 65% of them are returning with more and more campaigns. So, they've seen the benefits of the speed and the quality over which we can gather data on their behalf,” he added.

Hugo added that the service is mainly reaching employed South Africans who are looking to earn a little extra cash.

"I think it's one of the key misconceptions of the platform that we're largely aimed at unemployed,” he told Fin24.

"Only 4% of the people were unemployed on the platform. Our oldest jobber is 89. We've got 15% that are over 55,” he added.

M4JAM ‘profitable’

The M4JAM business model is based on taking a licence fee from clients on every successful completed job.

Hugo was not willing to disclose M4JAM’s revenue and profit figures but he said the business is profitable.

"We're profitable from day one. Profitable is relative. We're reinvesting all of the money that we're earning back into the platform to make the business unique,” Hugo told Fin24.

"Naspers and Tencent have a direct investment as a minority shareholder in Money for Jam and they made that investment in February of this year, and the intent is to grow us globally and get us some scale,” he added.

Hugo was not willing to disclose what stake media company Naspers and Chinese internet giant Tencent have in M4JAM or the level of their investment.

But the investment could spur on a global expansion of M4JAM as WeChat had 500 million monthly active users across the globe at the end of 2014, according to Statista.com.

"All I can say is that it was a significant investment in the business that has allowed us to build new functionality and start expanding,” Hugo told Fin24.

Looking ahead, Hugo said plans are in the pipeline to help M4JAM activate a mobile sales force that will let users sell products such as airtime and data bundles while earning a commission.

"We've been testing that in a closed community at the moment and some of the results have been positive, so what we're looking to do is for certain products that we think would resonate with our base, we will be rolling out sales type jobs where people could earn more money on a regular basis by selling airtime, by selling data bundles and the like,” Hugo said.

* Fin24 is part of 24.com, a subsidiary of Media24, which is in the Naspers stable. WeChat SA is a subsidiary of Naspers.

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