Jumia has announced plans to launch its own mobile money wallet by the end of the year. The company has said that this new online payment solution will be implemented in Nigeria, its biggest market, before expanding to other markets including Kenya.
Jumia pay is essentially a third party online payment solution that will provide users with a safer, faster and more convenient online payment experience. What this means is that you will be able to load money into an escrow and then use the money there to buy products on Jumia. This is an important development considering the fact that most transactions on Jumia (between 70 to 90%) are still cash based.
Commenting on this, Jeremy Hodara, coCEO of Jumia said “Jumia Pay has a very simple yet crucial objective: go even further in providing a safe, a secure and a convenient shopping experience to our customers, building trust along the way between us, our thousands of sellers and our millions of customers. We are very proud to be able to offer this new service to our customers and participate in building financial inclusion in Africa to unbanked or underbanked populations”.
Jumia says that its online payment solution borrows a few things from AliPay (Alibaba’s payment solution) and is a major milestone for improving customers’ online experience.
The company added that mobile money is important in Africa where mobile penetration is on the rise and where the main challenge is to build trust with the customers and to provide adequate payment systems. “Indeed, already 50% of Jumia customers access the different platforms via their mobile phone, that figure reaching 70% in Nigeria. With its very secure payment system using a confidential code, mobile money payment is among the most trusted forms of payment across Africa,” the company said in a statement.
With mobile payment, Jumia says that transfer is instantaneous and cheaper than bank transactions. Another advantage with such a system is it does not require users to have bank accounts, this is important in Africa where not everyone has a bank account.
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