Rolling out merchant apps, new wave of mCommerce

In May 2014, ahead of the media launch for Standard Bank's new mCommerce app, SnapScan, Litha Communications was appointed to roll out the app to 5000 SMME merchants across South Africa. With five teams of 132 marketers, the company visited all hotspot shopping centres in South Africa, using an additional team for corporate retailers.

"The future of access is mobile in South Africa - recent stats ranked South Africa 5th in world for mobile data usage and Cisco expects mobile traffic growth will be double that of fixed traffic in South Africa. It forecasts that there will be 40 million mobile users by 2018, up from 38 million in 2013 and 95% of those users will access the Internet by the end of the forecast period.

"The rise of social media, content-rich apps and video content accessed from a new range of cheaper smartphones has prompted the rise. Social media will move out of the playroom into the boardroom and define the new marketer," says Teresa Jenkins, MD of Litha Communications.