In the latest version of its product upgrades, Ghana's leading name in bulk SMS messaging, Hubtel, has released features to enable users to collect payment and send money to as many contacts at the same time via SMS.

Head of Product at Hubtel, Patrick Asare-Frimpong, announcing this update, said, "In Ghana, mobile money and bank accounts are the most common ways to send and receive money.

"This primarily serves person-to-person payments, but for businesses who need to collect payment from many people at the same time, such as schools, churches, estate managers, and alumni groups, taking payments to a mobile money number often creates some problems. It can be very time-consuming and hard to track who has paid from who hasn't."

"We have solved this problem by upgrading our bulk SMS messaging to make it simple for anyone who needs to collect payments from many people to simply alert them via SMS to pay.

"Each SMS has a unique code and a payment link to pay for any amount. This new update will save our users a lot of time chasing many people to make payments. It’s perfect schools, churches, associations, social media groups, estate managers and businesses in general," he added.

In addition to taking payments from many people via SMS, users can also send money to as many contacts with a unique withdrawal code to withdraw the money instantly to any mobile money wallet or bank account.

This feature is most ideal for users such as; event planners, who work with various vendors and suppliers when managing an event.

When sending money, the event planner can simply assign specific amounts to send to different mobile numbers in a contact list.

In a demonstration of the feature, Patrick Asare-Frimpong guided some users and said, “using SMS & Money to send, collect and track payments is just as easy as sending a bulk SMS in five simple steps.

1. Prepare your contact data in Microsoft Excel
2. Upload your excel file and compose SMS. Personalise your message with unique data of each person (for example, name, contribution type, amount to pay)
3. Set payment features: choose to allow or disallow payment in instalment
4. Send SMS at the lowest rate of 2p (GH₵0.02) per message
5. Track who has paid and remind those who haven't

Hubtel is the world’s first messaging technology platform to offer this kind of service. The company's primary mission since its inception in 2005 has been to make it easier for businesses to connect with their customer.

According to 2021 data from the Bank of Ghana and the Ghana Interbank Payment & Settlement Systems, Hubtel currently processes nearly 8.3 per cent of all successful mobile money payments in Ghana.

With the introduction of this feature, the company will be looking forward to a significant increase in its transaction volumes.