Start-up M4Jam, which launched commercial services this week, is hoping to make a dent in South Africa’s unemployment crisis. The company — its name is short for “money for jam” offers people with smartphones jobs that take a short period to complete.

Started by 44-year-old entrepreneur Andre Hugo, the idea is to provide “micro jobs” to people who are unemployed or those who want to make extra money on the side.

Hugo came up with the idea after a conversation with Warren Venter, founder of another start-up, Waytag, which was looking for an easy way to crowdsource data points. Venter is now the company’s chief operating officer and Hugo’s business partner.

He then discussed the idea with WeChat Africa MD Brett Loubser, who agreed to make it available through the social media platform.

Jobs on M4Jam are either location-centric or not. Users can fill in surveys from anywhere in exchange for payment, or accept jobs that require them to be on site, such as verifying that points of interest on a personal navigation device maker’s maps are, in fact, accurate.

Hugo says it was easy to integrate M4Jam into WeChat. “We have an application programming interface (API) that plugs into the platform. Other APIs have been built, for example for feature phones, but we first want to stabilise the product on our existing platforms.”

After its commercial switch-on this past Monday, Hugo says the first job was completed within two minutes of launch, with 512 jobs completed in the first 90 minutes. By 12pm on Monday — four hours after launching — M4Jam had paid R16 400 to micro jobbers.

Micro jobbers earn from R15 a job and jobs need to be completed in a set time. When someone wants to cash out, they are sent a code via SMS using MTN Mobile Money. This code is then simply shown to a teller at Pick n Pay or Boxer stores in exchange for the cash. Cash-outs attract a fee of R4 each.