“We remain focused on all aspects of our growth strategy, particularly JumiaPay, as we continue to drive its usage in our markets,” Jumia noted in its quarterly report with U.S. SEC.
That was a very powerful observation because no ecommerce company in emerging markets like India and China has done well without building a great paytech company. China’s Alibaba has Alipay, India’s Flipkart has PhonePe. Jumia needs to make JumiaPay big.
Did you notice a pattern? The PhonePe is the double play for FlipKart. Yes, no matter what is happening in the ecommerce space, the payment arm will be doing just fine [commissions on transactions are assured]. Also, it turns out that successful ecommerce companies like Alibaba (with Alipay) in emerging markets have always have payment units.
To execute this and build a really great fintech business, Jumia has jobs for loan officers. Simply, Jumia wants to build a Lending Business and through that structure will deepen its JumiaPay. This fintech will bring unification of payments, lending and transaction processing at scale.
Our Junior loan officer will assist the development of Jumia Lending in Kenya by presenting our solution to our sellers. He/she will be helping our sellers to apply for a loan, and with the help of the loan officer will review the data collected and the applications. The Junior loan officer will be part of the JumiaPay team in Kenya and work side by side with the loan officer.
Did you notice a parallel with OPay’s amalgam of services like ORide, OTrike, OBus, etc? Yes, Jumia does have properties it can use to stimulate transactions volume for JumiaPay. Those include logistics services, hotel and flight booking, food ordering and drink delivery platform.
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I expect JumiaPay to become the most important component in the Jumia Group in coming years as it morphs all these pieces to feed transactions into it. Possibly, it can spin it off to give huge payday to its investors. Yes, the ecommerce can struggle but the paytech will win markets and territories – and profits. That makes this super-focus on payment a great move.
And as that happens, a double play is born at scale in Jumia.
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This is awesome as usual, the double play strategy . Thanks for sharing
The only way for Jumia to grow and dream of profitability is by making its ecosystem attractive, with all the pieces designed to make the payment unit its flagship product.
By adding a loan component, it helps bring something different in the payment space, while also stimulating demand; I expect to see a decent positive effect as a result of this, as long as the execution is seamless.
Team Jumia needs to keep thinking, there’s still work ahead, before it can secure all the flanks.
IN THE LONG TERM, AFTER ALL THE ‘INNOVATIONS’ ,THE ONLY WAY THAT JUMIA CAN MOVE FORWARD IS WHEN IT’S PRODUCTS AND SERVICES ARE GOOD ENOUGH THAT THE CONSUMER FEELS HE IS GETTING A BANG FOR EVERY BUCK SPENT ON PURCHASES.
I HAVE USED JUMIA’S ‘FLAGSHIP’ UNIT, THE E-STORE AND UNFORTUNATELY WHAT YOU SEE IS NOT WHAT YOU GET. TO THE EXTENT THAT CONSUMERS ARE DISSATISFIED WITH THE ONLINE EXPERIENCE AT JUMIA AND THE COMPANY SEEMS UNABLE OR UNWILLING TO RECTIFY THAT, THEN WHATEVER INNOVATION INTRODUCED, BY THE COMPANY, WOULD ONLY HAVE A POTEMKIN EFFECT.