Disruption & You
The evolution of airtime recharge in Nigeria, and what it teaches us about change
In 2007 when I relocated to Lagos to make my luck in the big city, the only means of purchasing airtime was by buying scratch cards or recharge cards as they are more popularly called on this side of the world. Initially, it was a small card (about the size of an ATM card), branded in the colours of each service provider, with a silver panel on one side. Subscribers bought these cards, scratched the crud on the silver panel to reveal a 12-digit number, and dialed the numbers along with some USSD prompts to get value. With time, these fancy cards became flimsy strips of paper, stapled together to obscure the 12-digit numbers printed on them. With the strips of paper, service providers spent less on printing cards, the ‘used recharge card’ pollution tide receded, and our index fingers rejoiced.
In the Nigerian spirit of industry, recharge cards opened up an entire business ecosystem for the many people that sold them for a living, in street corners, makeshift kiosks and on road medians. There was this man called Stephen stationed at the gate into my estate, who was my go-to-guy anytime my airtime was low, or whenever I needed to buy phone credit on credit.
Then VTU came along.
