Senegal’s telecoms regulatory authority announced on Sunday a deal in the months-long dispute between Sonatel, an Orange-branded operator in West Africa, and the American start-up Wave in the money and mobile payments transfer sector.
Wave will be permitted to offer Orange telephone credit under the same terms as its competitor Orange Finances Mobiles, a subsidiary of Sonatel, according to an official of the Authority of Regulation of Telecommunications and Posts (ARTP) who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Wave declared in June 2021 that it had seized the ARTP because Sonatel was preventing the purchase of Orange phone credit over the Wave platform.
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In a statement, ARTP stated that the mediation it had conducted had resulted in a “happy ending.” The ARTP entails the signature of a contract between the two parties for the sale of Orange telephone credit, as well as the option for Wave to connect to Sonatel’s application programming interfaces (API), allowing apps to communicate with one another.
It recalled asking Sonatel to “implement, without reservation, the principles of equal treatment and access, transparency, and non-discrimination” and to provide Wave the same terms as Orange Mobile Finances.
In 2021, Sonatel stated that it had made Wave a technical and economic offer comparable to those given to other service providers to distribute Orange telephone credit. However, Wave asked from Sonatel “remuneration greater than what we offered to offset the freebies it provides,” Sonatel claimed.
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On Sunday, neither Wave nor Sonatel could be reached.
On its website, Wave claims to be the first network of financial services without account management fees on an African continent where only a small percentage of the population has access to a bank account. Sonatel’s recent entry into the Senegalese market has introduced new competition, particularly in the area of money transfers, which is common in Senegal.
Senegal Wave Orange Senegal Wave Orange
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
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