Profiteering Kenyans selling Fuliza domain for Sh100m
Enterprising Kenyans have already registered a range of Fuliza domains hoping to squeeze a coin from Safaricom.
The faceless individuals have reserved fuliza.com which is being sold for Sh100 million ($1 million), fuliza.co.ke for Sh10 million ($100,000) and filiza.co.ke.
Fuliza is an overdraft facility launched by Safaricom on January 7, this year and enables M-Pesa customers to send or complete mobile payment transactions even if their M-Pesa balance is below the required amount.
In the first week of its launch, more than one million customers signed up and had borrowed Sh1 billion.
BLACKMAIL COMPANIES
Reserving domains and social media handles is a trick used by techies worldwide to blackmail companies and celebrities into buying them.
For instance, hours after Airtel and Telkom Kenya announced a merger last week, the Twitter handle @AirtelTelkom and @telkomairtel_ke were immediately reserved.
Gotta buy it
— Telkom (@AirtelTelkom) February 8, 2019
They have to buy this
— TelkomAirtel_ke (@telkomairtel_ke) February 8, 2019
In most cases, though, the companies often call bluff on such individuals by either approaching the tech companies and having the handles given to them or opening totally different channels.