20 Aug Are Global Online Payment Methods Coming to Africa?

The global and mobile online payment market is getting very interesting with competition, largely siloed operators in Asia and USA.  Emerging market mobile payment solutions like GrabPay, TenPay, AliPay and Antpay have literally millions of consumers transacting on their platforms and buying value added goods and services.

A clever combination of social interaction and payment increases stickiness and increases the frequency of use.  These platforms are working on following their customers to other parts of the world and Alipa for eg has contracted with companies in other parts of the world to provide payment services to their customers.

PayPal, Venmo and Zelle from the US predominantly are experiencing double digit growth.  PayPal has had its challenges most likely due to its high profile in getting established for payment services across Africa.  

Africa is not a simple and easy place to do business as an online payments operator. Legislation, consumer behaviours leaning towards cash and MNO payments services make it difficult for incoming payments operators to get eyeballs and traction.  

We talk about “Africa”, but to make things more complicated, its 50+ countries, each with their unique market dynamics.  For example. Online payments for eCommerce in Nigeria is dominated by card and bank transfer, Kenya is mostly M-Pesa and South African eCommerce payments are largely by card and a bit of automated EFT.

So for now, the African continent is going to be mainly mobile money - M-Pesa, Airtel Money, Orange Money and some regional players like TigoPesa.