Accra, April 1, GNA - MTN Ghana on Wednesday launched a new service that enables individual prepaid subscribers to recharge their credits online and distributors to create online accounts to recharge credits for MTN customers.

The service - MTN Web Recharge - was developed by Ghana WHO Limited, a Ghanaian-based internet content developing organization, as an addition to the other manual ways of recharging and distributing MTN credit.

Mr Shaibu Haruna, Senior Manager for Sales and Distribution at MTN, who launched the service, said it was intended to provide convenience, flexibility, and efficient access to recharge by giving adequate credit to distributors everywhere, once they were connected to the internet. "With this innovation, airtime can be transferred to any MTN prepaid phone 24 hours a day, seven days a week in varying denominations; the system allows customers to load airtime ranging from a minimum amount of GH¢0.1 to GH¢50 cedis in multiples of GH¢0.1," he said.

He said the service, which was available on the MTN Ghana website www.mtn.com.gh, also provided another business avenue for internet caf=E9s, business centres and commercial setups with internet connection.

Mr Alfred Pentsil from Ghana WHO explained that to access the service retailers, corporate organisations and sub-dealers needed to create accounts with MTN but individual subscribers needed to attach themselves to retailers online.

He demonstrated how the service worked by sending GH20¢ worth of MTN credit to some journalists who witnessed the launch and they received messages on the phones telling them they had been credited with the amount.

"All you need to do is to go to the MTN website, click on "Business Link" then "recharge" and follow through with the process until you find a retailer near you to attach yourself to," he said. He said corporate organizations could also create one account for their staff and make payment schedules for staff at particular times and their phones would be automatically credited at the given time without any human intervention.

Mr Pentsil said the service was safe assign that no one could hack into it because the process demanded that one confirmed his account before one could access the service.

In a related development MTN presented a Toyota Fortuner four-wheel drive worth over $35,000 to Samini, one of Ghana top musicians and face of MTN Ghana.

Mr Victor Bannerman-Chedid, Senior Manager, Customer Management, who presented the keys to Samini said the gesture was in recognition of his show of leadership and innovation in his career, which were in line with MTN's values.

Samini assured MTN that he would continue to live up to expectation and the confidence reposed in him to live out the MTN values of leadership, innovation, reliability, integrity and can-do spirit. He said even though he had many cars, he would use the Fortuner in recognition of his relationship with MTN. 1 April 09