Recharge Card Business in Nigeria: How to Get Started

Since the early 2000’s when GSM companies stormed Nigeria, recharge cards have become a major necessity. Don’t be surprised when you ask a millennium child what the basic necessities of life are and he/she goes “Food, water, clothing and recharge cards”because believe it or not, recharge cards have become a basic necessity of life.

We communicate daily with our phones, send text messages and surf the internet with our phones and computers and to do this, we need airtime. Even though there are other means of recharging our phones, the fastest way to recharge is still by purchasing a recharge card.

Recharge card business has the potential to give you huge profit daily. One of the reasons why I personally love this business is that you are always guaranteed patronage.

You don’t need to spend too much time, money and energy on advertising and canvassing for customers as long as you have the stock and can do some minimal advertising, people would come to buy from you.

There are three major ways to start your recharge card business. You can either start as a retailer, a sub-dealer or a dealer. I would explain each one individually as well as the capital requirements for each of them.

Retailers

The recharge card retailers are those men and women that are usually seen beside the road selling recharge cards. Some of them also make use of small shops or sell their recharge cards alongside other products like food stuff, provisions, drinks etc.

Some recharge card sellers also hawk recharge cards on the streets and in traffic. The capital requirement for this scale of recharge card business is quite minimal. With as little as N5, 000 – N10, 000 or even less, you can start a recharge card retail business.

You can get your stock from recharge card sub-dealers that sell in packs. Although, the profit on the sales on recharge card is meager (Between N2 and N5 on average), the beauty of this business is in the turnover. If you have a lot of customers, you can make between N500 and N2, 000 profit from selling recharge cards daily.

Sub-Dealers

These categories of sellers are higher than the regular retailers. They deal directly with major dealers and are able to get recharge cards at a discounted price and then in turn, sell to the retailers for a profit.

Capital requirements for this scale of recharge business is between N100, 000 and N500,000 and you can earn between N5,000 and N20,000 depending on level of patronage.

Dealers

These are the big boys of the recharge card sales business. They deal directly with telecommunications companies where they get their pins from and then go on to print recharge cards in bulk. They sell to sub-dealers and make the highest profit in the distribution chain.

To start this business, you would need at least N10, 000,000 or more especially if you’ll be dealing with multiple GSM service providers.

13 thoughts on “Recharge Card Business in Nigeria: How to Get Started”

  1. Hello Mr Shajobi, Im interested in this bulk purchases of recharge cards.

    I know lots of changes has happened recently to the business.

    Can you kindly mail me any relevance steps to be taken pls.

    Thanks

  2. If you want to start recharge card business as a sub-dealer, you will need these three basic things,
    1. recharge card printing software
    2. a computer system
    3. and e-pin dealer
    you get e-pin from INLINE ROYAL COMM. (08022779072) or many others but I prefere INLINE because I have been into business with them for long.

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