PayU has rolled out strategies to intensify efforts to connect businesses to Nigeria’s online payment market. Annual online payments in Nigeria is estimated to surpass N200 billion this year from N167 billion in 2016.

Country Manager of PayU Nigeria, Ms Juliet Nwanguma,  says, “In order to pursue PayU’s aggressive expansion in the online payment market in Nigeria, we have identified businesses that can benefit from our  global expertise across 16 markets where we offer over 250 payment options.”

With over 2.3 billion users world-wide, PayU is confident it can help businesses grow their market share and help them to achieve their business objectives.

Data recently released by the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) showed that 5.5 million transactions worth N46.7 billion were generated through online sales in the first quarter of 2017. This is an increase in the quarterly average of 3.5 million transactions worth N33 billion in 2016. This 58% growth is a clear indication of the increased confidence and preference for online sales amongst Nigerians.

The double digit growth, according to Nwanguma, is far below the potential of the market for online payments in Nigeria.

Nwanguma noted that in a country of over 180 million people, consisting of 61 million active bank customers and where e-payment transactions are worth N56 trillion in a year, the potential for online payments in Nigeria is huge and waiting to be tapped.

She disclosed that the mission of PayU is to leverage on Nigeria’s 97 million active internet users to popularise and increase online payments in Nigeria.

“At PayU, we believe that with the deployment of appropriate strategies and products which are designed to encourage more businesses to adopt online payment, the market in Nigeria can record triple digit growth in both volume and value of online payments. This is the driving philosophy of PayU’s operations in Nigeria” she said.

Since last year when we entered the Nigerian market, we have used our globally tested products such as tokenisation, recurring payments for subscription services and single click payments for faster checkout. Our range of services according to different business categories especially the PayU Easy service allows start-ups to start selling online instantly without the need of a bank account or trading history. ”

“PayU has succeeded in successfully assisting small, medium and large organisations with their online payments. In particular, the robust and flexible features of PayU Plus and PayU Enterprise have assisted merchants to grow and expand their online payment business.”

PayU offers merchants safe, secure, online shopping.  Their products are   PCI DSS Level 1 compliant which mean they are required to meet extremely stringent security criteria. All card details are secured by secure socket layer (SSL) and transfer layer security (TLS) encryption and reinforced through various encryption processes in order to provide protection for all payment information.   They also are 3D secure enabled which gives consumers added security when shopping online.

The increased preference for online payments among Nigerians offers new opportunity for businesses to increase patronage and grow revenue.

The global expertise of PayU, combined with its easy-to-use and secure online products provide the channel to leverage on this opportunity and achieve business objectives.

The corruption-related revelations of the last Administration in Nigeria have shown that Nigeria needs a world-class Procurement Fraud Unit to reduce or better eliminate procurement related fraud in the nation. Big data analytics is a special area of computer science that uses high-level mathematical models to provide patterns or trends out of large datasets. Procurement related corruption can be drastically reduced in Nigeria through pattern matching and analytics. In this videocast, I present a technology solution that will help Nigeria deal with its corruption issues especially on public procurement.

In today’s videocast, I discuss how Jobberman, the pioneer job recruitment firm, can boost growth in its operations. As recession continues to affect companies, Jobberman must position itself as a firm that can train and deliver top-grade technical minds for local and international companies in Nigeria. It must have specialization in its recruitment/consulting business and build a category-king business therein. The future of this company is bright because most business operations will go digital. But it has to offer more in Nigeria besides connecting employers and potential employees as the pool of quality employees is low.

Alibaba.com will soon open operations in Africa with specific focus on Nigeria. We do think that the firm’s global ambition cannot be completed without having Africa in the midst. There is evidence that expansion, not necessarily via e-commerce, is imminent. In short, they are already in the continent through a partner firm. The e-commerce is just going to be added very soon.

For the past decade, fintech startups in the Africa with U.S. partners have successfully unbundled financial services. By focusing on one vertical such as consumer lending, remittance, receivables or life insurance, these startups leverage modern tech stacks to reimagine a single offering, and do it better than the incumbents.

However consumers may still desire the simplicity of a “one-stop-shop.” With this in mind,  it is very possible for financial services to be re-bundled on a modern tech platform.

Ant Financial, the $60b financial services behemoth spun out of Alibaba, may have created the playbook. Formerly known as Alipay, Ant Financial was launched in 2004 as an escrow-based method for Alibaba’s customers to pay online. Today, Ant Financial’s users can also build and obtain credit, manage investments, save in a digital bank, and acquire insurance.

In the process, Ant Financial has established a dominant market position in China. Over 70% of China’s online commerce goes through Alipay, and the company sees accelerating adoption of its other services.  The company also has international ambitions, partnering with First Data in the U.S. to enable its users shop with 4 million American merchants. The company is now paying $1.2b to acquire Moneygram and dip its toe in the international money transfer market.

That acquisition of Moneygram is the path into Africa. Moneygram has been operating in the continent for many years. Ant Financial will simply use that vehicle to redesign the financial system in selected countries it may decide to operate. Nigeria will be one of those countries.

Ant’s ubiquity will be a huge change for local e-commerce companies as the escrow account strategy is something many Africans will agree with. They will bundle many services in the midst with remittance, transfer etc all together to deliver one-stop service at scale few can compete. Jumia and Konga will have more challenges to deal with since Ant Financial will likely be a precursor for Alibaba.com to open shop in Africa. Once they have built up the payment system, the next is the marketplace.

They truly want global domination and without Africa, they cannot claim that title.