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Case study · Blu Dot SA · Fibre signup on WhatsApp

Fibre signup that happens on WhatsApp.

Blu Dot SA sells internet to the people other providers turn away. We built the way they sign up: a WhatsApp conversation, three questions and a card payment. No credit check, no paperwork, no debit order. Plus the tools for the agents who sell it.

Visit bludotsa.co.za
Who it's for
South Africans buying fibre, LTE and 5G
Our role
Product, engineering, website and agent tools
Running since
2025; the new platform since July 2026
Status
Live, taking real payments
Three Blu Dot screens: an agent's lead pipeline, a signup link to share on WhatsApp, and the deals available at a customer's address. Sample data.

Half the steps, none of the gates.

5steps from first message to paid, down from ten
0credit checks, forms or debit orders
3questions, none that branch
40releases in the first nine weeks

We say yes when others say no.

That's Blu Dot's promise. The standard way to sign up for fibre was built to filter customers out, and it was costing Blu Dot the customers it exists for.

Credit checks say no

Most fibre signups vet credit before anything else. Plenty of people who'd pay every month are turned away at the first step, and Blu Dot's whole promise is to say yes to them.

The checkout is a wall

The white-label store Blu Dot started with asked for a one-time PIN, identity paperwork, an account and a debit-order mandate before anyone could pay. Every gate lost people.

Prices that don't match

An advertised price that differs from the quote someone gets later is a conversion killer, and a consumer-protection risk.

Every step had to earn its place.

We started from the checkout Blu Dot already had, removed every step the sale didn't need, and measured what was left.

  1. 1Discover

    Walk the old checkout, step by step

    We went through the existing white-label signup end to end and wrote down every step: address, roof pin, deals, add-ons, cart, one-time PIN, identity, account, debit order, payment. Then we asked which ones the sale actually needed.

  2. 2Ship

    Live early, then released often

    A first version on WhatsApp carried paying customers before the rebuild. The new platform went live in July 2026 and switched to live card payments on its second day. Forty releases followed in nine weeks.

  3. 3Measure

    Two numbers, and the nerve to switch things off

    Success is two rates from the event ledger: how many shared links become a WhatsApp conversation, and how many people who start the signup pay without help. An automatic reminder that misfired at the wrong people was switched off after two days, until the data says it earns its keep.

From a WhatsApp message to connected.

Customers never fill in a form or make an account. Agents run their whole pipeline from their phone.

It starts with a message

Someone taps a link or scans a QR code, and WhatsApp opens with a message ready to send. Sending it starts the signup, and their personal signup link comes straight back.

Deals at their address

The signup checks coverage live at the customer's address, across fibre networks such as Vumatel and Openserve, plus LTE and 5G, and shows only what's available there.

Three questions, no branches

A fixed set of three questions that never branch, block or change the price. Fewer questions converts better.

Pay once, by card

A once-off card payment through Paystack instead of a debit-order mandate. Identity verification, which the law still requires, happens after the sale, not in the way of it.

Agents in the field

Sales agents capture leads, check coverage at any address, share personal links and print QR posters for in-person sign-ups. Every conversion they bring in earns them a credit.

An admin view of the whole team

Leads, agents, pricing and the two headline rates in one place. A production report adds the funnel step by step, an agent leaderboard and the reasons leads were lost.

Under the hood.

Signing people up is the easy part to see. The work is keeping money, coverage and agents' commission correct across WhatsApp, a wholesale provider and a payment gateway, none of which we control.

  • React 19
  • Cloudflare Pages
  • Pages Functions
  • Cloudflare D1
  • Keychat (WhatsApp)
  • Vox API
  • Paystack
  • Cucumber
  • Astro
  • n8n
  • Kubernetes · Helm
  • GitLab CI

Your phone number is your login

Agents and admins have no passwords. Messaging the Blu Dot WhatsApp line from their number is the request to sign in, and the sign-in link is the reply.

A ledger, not a lead table

Every event and every credit is appended to a ledger that is never edited. The lead list is worked out from it, so any number on a report can be traced back to what happened.

Commission that settles itself

The first agent to reach a person keeps them for a fixed window. A tracked code beats a phone-number match, and losing claims are kept on the lead, so a dispute is settled from the record, not by argument.

Coverage from the source

Coverage and deals come live from Vox, the wholesale provider Blu Dot sells through, so the customer is shown what can actually be installed at their address today.

Test money never meets real money

Test leads are routed to Paystack's test keys automatically, so the team can try the live system end to end without a real charge.

Built on our own WhatsApp platform

WhatsApp runs through Keychat, the platform we built and run for restaurants. Blu Dot got a proven messaging layer instead of a new one.

Forty releases, none by hand.

The behaviour is written as plain-language scenarios that run against stand-ins for WhatsApp, Vox and Paystack. Every change has to pass all of them, and a release ships itself from a tag.

  1. 1Spec108 scenarios against stubbed WhatsApp, Vox and Paystack
  2. 2SchemaThe database schema applied on every release
  3. 3SecretsPayment keys synced from CI, never by hand
  4. 4DeployTo Cloudflare, on each tagged release
126commits on the platform
108executable scenarios
40tagged releases
0manual deploys

A website that sends people to WhatsApp.

We built bludotsa.co.za too, with the legal pages an internet provider needs and a sign-up form for new agents. It has one job.

The website never transacts

It shows no prices and runs no coverage check. Every button leads to WhatsApp, so the price a customer sees is always the one they're quoted.

From shop to internet provider

The site replaced an old online store selling electronics, from when Blu Dot still did retail. It now does one job: start a conversation.

Found by the people looking

In its first four months, the site averaged fifth place in Google results. People search for the signup itself: “blue dot online application” alone brought 29 clicks.

12,122Google search impressions, June to September 2026
470clicks from search, 98% from South Africa
5.0average position in Google results

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