A while back, the Africa Internet Group (AIG) re-branded its startups with each one of them taking the Jumia name. Under the new order, Jovago became Jumia Travel, Lamudi changed to Jumia House while HelloFood became Jumia Food. Site car Carmudi changed to Jumia Cars while Vendito became Jumia Deals withJob search site Everjobs becoming Jumia Jobs. The move was meant to give the company more marketing clout.
In line with these efforts, Jumia has announced the launch of Jumia Pay, a third party online payment solution. Jumia Pay aims at facilitating online payments across the 23 African countries where Jumia operates. The service is modeled on AliPay, which is Chinese e-commerce site Alibaba’s online payment solution. This means that Jumia Pay, will not only be used for online check-out on when shopping online but may also include other activities such as the payment of utility bills and even top up of mobile phones with airtime.
According to Jeremy Hodara, Co-CEO of Jumia, Jumia Pay will provide a safe, secure and convenient shopping experience to for customers across its various platforms in addition to fostering financial inclusion. Jumia Pay will first launch in Nigeria, which is Jumia’s biggest market before launch in other markets across the African continent.
How will this be relevant in this market? The existing payment channels are already sufficient. This looks like the “tech curse” where every tech concern has to launch something every so often.
Big picture for starting a wallet (and is quite overlooked) usually is so they have loads of money floating around for use. Think about it, people need to load their wallets, that’s operating cash right there.