Bank Boosts VAS Portfolio with LOTTO

At 9% of all value-added services (VAS) sales, LOTTO is a popular consumer product in South Africa. As consumers are adopting digital payment methods, bank mobile apps are gaining in popularity and most of the top banks already include LOTTO as part of their online offering. One of Electrum’s Bank customers needed to add this service to their growing VAS portfolio to remain competitive and to continue to meet customer expectations when it came to in-app services.

The Challenge

Until recently, Electrum’s Bank customer offered only the essential VAS but the Bank understood from its customers that they expected the same digital offerings as offered by other banks. As a Top 5 Bank, expanding to include entertainment services was a logical and competitive next step. This was achieved quickly by adding LOTTO as a service: giving clients the ability to play LOTTO, PowerBall, and Daily LOTTO via the Bank’s app.

As customer demand indicated that the service would have a high uptake from the Bank’s clients, the solution needed to be highly scalable and dependable when it came to transaction volumes and error handling. Fast adoption by the Bank’s customer base was proven as the new offering saw high usage in the first few days after launch. In line with the need for excellent usability, playing LOTTO needs to be as simple as possible for their customers, with access across multiple bank channels.

Of course, a well-run bank will always look to cut out-loss making and unnecessary operational overheads. The solution needed to ensure as much straight-through processing as possible, of both the wager and winnings payouts, in order to reduce the need for daily manual operational processes.

The Solution

Electrum implemented an iThuba LOTTO integration combined with a reconciliation and settlement solution which allows:

1. A single integration API to let consumers play all available iThuba LOTTO games
2. Easy and affordable access to LOTTO games through the channel that is most convenient to the player
3. Dynamic app updates as the games change
4. Automatic reconciliation and settlement of wagers with iThuba on a daily basis 
5. Automatic processing of winnings and payouts into client bank accounts on a daily basis

To meet the Bank’s affordability objective, the solution fully automates not only the wager placement transactions, but also the payment of winnings into clients’ bank accounts. This important feature ensures that winners will get paid out automatically, with the winnings transferred straight into their bank account (for amounts up to R250 000). There is no need for players to visit stores or physical branches to claim their winnings - saving them time and making the funds available immediately. The automated Back Office system also processes reconciliation and settlement wagers daily, and simplifies business reporting.

In addition to processing the payouts, the LOTTO solution enables the Bank to discern the various tiers of winners so that payouts can be processed in accordance with iThuba Service Level Agreements.

The Bank already uses Electrum's Digital Goods and Services Platform to process Prepaid Airtime, Prepaid Electricity, and Bill Payment transactions and so trusted them to provide another high-volume service in the form of LOTTO. Electrum provided the iThuba integration to the Bank, complete with the necessary error handling, monitoring and alerting, and reporting. This meant the Bank could launch the LOTTO service with confidence, knowing that the Electrum solution is robust and scalable enough to handle the high transaction volumes expected from the service from the first day of operation.

“The service was very rapidly adopted by consumers upon launch and has proven itself to be reliable and scalable so as to support the Bank’s overall goals of meeting customer expectations.”  

Werner Pyke, Electrum Head of Product

Book a Demo

Looking to grow your VAS portfolio? Book a demo today to find out how Electrum can help your business meet customer expectations.