By now you should know the trend, if it’s Safaricom and I’m the author, it’s probably a rant, a leak or on the rare, a complimentary piece.
Well, this one is a leak, a huge one at that. One that will send chills down the spines of some big e-commerce players in Kenya.
Safaricom is set to launch an e-commerce platform dubbed Masoko.
Masoko will take on platforms such as Jumia and Kilimall head-on with the advantage of having Safaricom’s deep pockets, its partners and Lipa na M-Pesa online built into it. According to the information we have, Masoko is meant to be an avenue for local merchants, including supermarkets, and customers to interact and trade in a bid for Safaricom to boost its M-Pesa payments platform (Lipa na M-Pesa).
Read More: Safaricom Set to Launch Lipa Na M-Pesa Card as Rumours of a Stand-alone Payments Service Resurface
Masoko is said to stock various items from tech products to fashion products and even food products. The e-commerce platform will allegedly boast of “quality products at competitive prices and offer exceptional service”. Being Safaricom, services offered will probably be better than the current offerings from other e-commerce sites, considering Sendy is said to be one of the logistics firms handling deliveries of the goods.
The platform will launch its internal testing phase on Thursday, July 27, with a 50-percent off offer for employees on all fashion items (lucky lot), followed by a public roll out somewhere around mid-August.
We believe that Safaricom will leverage its current subscribers, which sits at around 27.7 million, to transform them into Masoko customers – so be ready for those annoying promotional texts you did not sign up for.
With such big news, this is probably how Jumia and Kilimall offices will be today:
