The Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (DSE) has started to use mobile phones platform on buying and selling shares and bonds.
The platform that is user friendly envisages widening the equity and debt trading activities especially upcountry where brokers are not present.
The DSE Chief Executive Officer, Mr Moremi Marwa, said the platform designed by Maxcom Africa follows abide with all regulations regarding selling and buying shares.
"The CRDB Bank right issue listing is used as the launch pad for the mobile platform, from today everyone could trade using mobile phone," Mr Marwa said during the listing of CRDB shares.
To buy or sell share simply dial *150*36# and the software will direct the user on the next step until the transaction is completed.
"The buyer or seller mobile transactions will still pass to the stockbroker for effecting the trading," Mr Marwa said. Simply, the investors in remote places will be able to access the bourse's Trading and Depository platform through their mobile phones via virtual stock brokers.
According to DSE, under the initiative, investors can buy and sell shares, bonds and any future listed instruments without physically visiting stock brokers or agents.
"We envisage that this initiative will deepen even further accessibility of financial products which are listed in our stock exchange," Mr Marwa said.
The trading rules -- as they related to trading, delivery and settlement of securities and cash will apply as is currently the case. The Maxcom Africa Managing Director, Mr Juma Rajabu, said the Tanzania become the first bourse in Africa to use the mobile phone trading platform.
"The buyers and sellers will not be charged anything, only the usual charge of trading transaction imposed by DSE will be applied," Mr Rajabu said.
CRDB Bank acting Managing Director Esther Kitoka said they are glad that the bourse has picked them as the launching pad of the mobile phone trading.
"We will continue to support initiative to make the trading at DSE easier," Ms Kitoka said. Initially, the Mwalimu Bank initial public offer used the mobile phone transaction platforms hence enabling it to get oversubscription.
Due to mobile phone platform, Core Securities CEO Mr George Fumbuka told 'Daily News' earlier that for the first time upcountry's buyers are dominating the Mwalimu Bank primary offer unlike the previous ones where Dar es Salaam topped the list.
DSE quickly took this advantage by enabling the public to have access to the bourse activities on their mobile phones. The Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority put the number of mobile phone users in Tanzania by last year as 31.86 million.
The mobile phones are expected to speed up the understanding of how are capital markets important for personal investment.
There is still a low participation in the market as about 200,000 people take part. These are fewer compared with Tanzania's population of about 50 million.