Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) and telecom companies are in talk over the ban of scratch cards in the country.
Their discussion, is to determine the fate of airtime scratch cards ahead of their impending ban in the country.
The said ban, has been scheduled to take effect from June 30.
It followed a spate of murders and kidnappings that the regulator blamed on unregistered Sim cards and open sale of airtime.
However, MTN chief marketing officer Olivier Prentout said they will comply with the directive to phase out the paper scratch cards by the June deadline.
MTN said they would instead be selling airtime through electronic means such as mobile money and online dealers.
“It is a directive issued by UCC to phase out scratch cards which I believe is a good thing because nobody will be littering pieces of scratch cards,” he said.
Although, he could not provide nominal figures of the plausible gain or loss to the telecom ahead of the ban.
Earlier, he said a number of telecoms still had scratch cards with some in transit at the time of the ban.
He, therefore said that not much would be lost by MTN given that, most stock ups had arrived after the announcement of the ban.
Ms Annie Tabura, the MTN sales and distribution general manager, said electronic airtime will give agents an opportunity to expand their commission income, which unlike scratch cards is much higher.
Airtel also informed agents in a mail that it was realigning commission for online airtime dealers to match mobile money and e-airtime dealers, among others.
Report by: Stephanie Horsu
