One of the standout attributes of the Jumia marketplace is the ease of making payments when shopping. Since 2018, we’ve had plenty of consumers express their desire for a similar level of convenience in paying for other services. This feedback has been the loudest in Egypt and we have invested meaningfully to develop an extensive digital services offering in Egypt. Today, the digital services marketplace is a hallmark of JumiaPay Egypt.
Responding through payments digitization
In 2018, we debuted JumiaOne, a marketplace for digital services, in Egypt with a few core services that our internal data analysis identified as essential customer acquisition strategies. This offering would later be rebranded as JumiaPay, and would evolve into a robust marketplace for a diverse range of digital services.
Our early JumiaOne services focused on essential services, like utility bill payment, airtime purchases, donations, subscriptions insurance and others. We have expanded this offering from a minimum viable product in 2018 to a more robust payment and lifestyle services platform.
As the business grew, we scrutinised our consumer demographics and focused on groups such younger customers and the online segment interested in digital entertainment and mobile gaming.
These observations spurred the provision of gaming subscriptions through the platform in conjunction with Mondia. The reality is that there are well over 200 million people who are below the age of 35 on the African continent.
How the service has fared thus far
Our support team has received numerous consumer messages praising the seamless user experience on the app and the variety of available services. In addition, thanks to a dedicated consumer feedback email, we can discover what consumers struggle with and the new services they would like to have on JumiaPay.
Through our partnership with Waffarha, Egyptian consumers can now get coupons and save on services at restaurants, spas, hotels, and more. This intersection of affordability, variety, and targeted services has accelerated the usage of the platform.
JumiaPay can host numerous types of rewards and promotion schemes, thus simplifying the execution of price-oriented marketing strategies. And with multiple consumers onboarded, businesses may now enjoy greater exposure while acquiring and retaining customers through an efficient and effective digital payments environment. The availability of cashback, discounts, and other subsidies on various services when paying via JumiaPay also means that customers can enjoy more affordable products and services.
Our team has taken this new concept a step further by developing JumiaPay for Business. This offering basically enables Egyptian merchants and other service providers in Egypt to receive payments from consumers through JumiaPay. It is designed to provide real-time visibility into business transactions through a user-friendly dashboard that is complemented by in-depth reporting and analytics.
JumiaPay’s consumer-facing solutions enable consumers in Egypt to converge several local and international payment methods such as bank debit, credit & prepaid cards, mobile money, bank transfers, agency payments and others. Consumers may now pay using any method attached with minimal steps involveds. Following the slogan “Pay Safe, Pay Easy,” our team reduced transaction time while maintaining security.
In this regard, we are licensed as a payments service provider via a partnership with the National Bank of Egypt (NBE). As an authorised payments facilitator, we are able to onboard businesses and allow them to receive electronic payments to their preferred account, wallet, or other payment destination.
Thanks to additional partnerships with companies like valU, consumers may now also pay in installments. We also have partners like Fawry making their online payments infrastructure available on our platform for consumers who want to pay in cash or by card on delivery, or through prepayment on the site. In the near future, we intend to provide payment links/invoice features, Soft Point-of-Sales terminal (SoftPOS), and a lot more.
Benefits of the JumiaPay Payments Platform
JumiaPay supports greater financial inclusion in Egypt, particularly for the unbanked population, by allowing them to make cashless and contactless payments for their day-to-day needs. This is in line with Jumia’s mission to digitise financial services and improve accessibility.
Consumers don’t have to worry about depositing funds into various wallets and constantly moving them around. JumiaPay puts multiple services under one umbrella, which allows consumers to pay for them all in one place, which is much more convenient.
At its core, JumiaPay delivers a unique payments processing model that empowers Egypt’s digital economy through payment solutions that are convenient, safe and easy to use. This helps to strengthen the trust between consumers and businesses, subsequently promoting financial inclusion and digital transformation in Egypt.
With innovations like JumiaPay, our team is devoted to providing financial services in a more user-friendly, secure, fast, and convenient manner. Furthermore, we always work to cater to those individuals who are inadvertently marginalized by the inadequacies of legacy financial service providers.
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Sarah Hassan
Head of Consumer Services - JumiaPay Egypt Sarah is an experienced business leader with more than 12 years of diverse and extensive local and international experience in Financial Services, Real Estate and Retail with a strong track record of setting up and driving successful business models across various industries. She is highly skilled in Strategic Planning, P&L Ownership, Brand Management, Market Research, and Growth Marketing Strategies. An AUC graduate that studied Journalism and Mass communication with a concentration in Integrated Marketing Communication and a minor in Psychology. As Head of Consumer Services at JumiaPay in Egypt, she contributes to the growth of a unique digital payments processing business model that empowers the digital economy with frictionless payment solutions that are convenient, safe, and easy to use. This model provides a new way to build trust between consumers and businesses to boost the financial inclusion and digital transformation in Egypt and Africa.