SMART Executie Mon Isberto explains the WAC initiative
In a cozy media event last week at Opus Lounge in Resorts World, Smart Communications unveiled their WAC initiative. WAC is a collective group of telcos who negotiated with Google so that they can let people buy applications and make in-app purchases using prepaid and postpaid load.
Okay, let’s take time to process that.
Buy apps. Smart load. No more credit card. International market. Pinoy app developers make more money. Brands can actually monetize apps. BOOM PAK, ika nga ni Ate Vangie.
Amazing news if you ask me. This opens up the flood gates to monetization for mobile applications here in the Philippines. Right now the market locally is very limited due to the low credit card penetration. By enabling people to pay via prepaid load you’re suddenly increasing potential market size by at least 500%-600%.
SMART shared several applications already integrated with WAC. Here they are:
- iCare – donation service
- Shoeophoric – social shopping app for shoes
- Topp App – international pasa load FTW
- FHM – which is amusingly developed by a company called “HAND interactive”.
Anyway for more information, head over to the MWC section at the SMART website here. There are no timelines yet for this project but hopefully we can see it in the market by Q2 this year. By the way, Smart also shared that they will be releasing a “Smart App Store” for Android soon.
PS: Props to my good friend Paul Pajo. He’s the Developer Evangelist of Smart.
For me i’d avoid all Smart apps like a plague. They can’t make good apps, they can’t design good website, they can’t code good app store framework. Are Smart devs even learning?