Jumia to launch mobile money wallet

PAN African ecommerce Jumia announced yesterday the launch of Jumia Pay, a third party online payment solution aimed at providing a safer, faster andmore convenient online payment experience.

The firm claimed that the online payment solution JumiaPay is a first for ecommerce and will most certainly be decisive in facilitating online payments across the 23 African countries where it operates, encouraging the progressive change to cash-less societies.

It explained that if the majority of payments performed on the platform is cash on delivery (between 70 to 90 per cent), JumiaPay comes as a major milestone for improving customers’ online experience for the coming months and years, following in the footsteps of Chinese ecommerce, Alibaba and its online payment platform, AliPay.

Co-CEO of Jumia, Jeremy Hodara, emphasized the value added of the new payment platform for the online custome, saying: “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”.

He informed that JumiaPay will be implemented in Jumia’s biggest market, Nigeria, with more innovations tocome before the end of the year.According to him, the advantages of mobile money are central for ecommerce in African countries where mobile penetration is soaring and where the main challenges are to build trust for the customers and provide adequate payment systems.

The firm explained that already 50 per cent of its customers access the different platforms via their mobile phone, that figure reaching 70 per cent 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.