In Senegal, The Telecoms Regulatory Authority Announces An Agreement Between Sonatel And Wave
AFRICA
By David Sadler
The telecoms regulatory authority in Senegal announced an agreement on Sunday, November 13, in the dispute between Sonatel, an operator active in West Africa under the Orange brand, and the American start-up Wave in the money transfer and mobile payment sector. Wave will be able, as it claimed the right, to distribute Orange telephone credit under the same conditions as its competitor Orange Finances Mobiles, a subsidiary of Sonatel, explained to AFP, on condition of anonymity, a manager of the Telecommunications and Posts Regulatory Authority (ARTP).
Wave announced in June 2021 that it had seized the ARTP because, according to it, Sonatel was blocking the purchase of Orange telephone credit via the Wave platform. The ARTP indicated in a press release that the mediation it had undertaken had found a “happy ending”. The ARTP evokes the signing of a contract between the two parties on the sale of Orange telephone credit and the possibility given to Wave to connect to the application programming interfaces of Sonatel, allowing the applications to communicate with each other.
ARTP recalls that it had asked Sonatel “to apply without reservation the principles of equal treatment and access, transparency and non-discrimination” and to grant Wave the same conditions as Orange Finances Mobiles. Sonatel said in 2021 that it had made Wave a technical and pricing offer equivalent to those offered to other service providers to distribute Orange telephone credit. But Wave demanded a “compensation higher than what [la Sonatel lui avait] offered to cover the gratuities it offers”, assured the Senegalese operator. Neither Wave nor Sonatel could be reached on Sunday.
Wave proclaims on its website to offer the first network of financial services without account management fees, on an African continent where a small minority of the population has access to a bank account. Its recent arrival on the Senegalese market has confronted Sonatel with new competition, particularly in the sector of money transfers, common in daily life in Senegal.
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