Last night, Cassava Smartech “officially” launched their social payments chat app – Sasai (though people had already been downloading the app).
One of the major complaints I’ve seen from most regarding Sasai has been concerning just how raw the application is right now. At the launch event, Cassava Smartech officials acknowledged that the product is not yet perfect but they said they would be iterating and adding features to it and they put timelines to when users should expect to receive them.
By Christmas 2019…
Product Head Tapera Mushoriwa during his presentation said Cassava expected the following updates to be up by year-end:
- Moments – Sasai’s version of Status/Story updates. Depending on how you feel about WhatsApp status this will be a good or a bad thing.
- Streaming – Not many details were shared regarding the streaming but it might be safe to assume this will tie-in with the already existing music tab in Sasai
- Savings & Donations – not much was shared outside that you’ll be able to make savings groups on the platform
- Open Platform APIs – There will be open APIs to “allow for different companies to come on to the platform”
Beyond 2019
Cassava has promised the following by Easter of 2020:
- Business app – There will be a business proposition which we expected
- Advertising – The ad management platform will “allow different companies to be able to reach the huge number of customers we are going to be expecting on the platform”
- Investments – not much was shared on this aspect
- Artificial Intelligence – not much was shared either
The promised features look enticing but we will only get to see the execution down the line. If done well this could actually rival WhatsApp and WeChat as Cassava Smartech intend. Let’s wait and see…
