22 Oct African eCommerce - Online Payments - Mobile Money - Card Acquiring
We are experiencing an unprecedented demand from multinational merchants for online payments across Africa with particular emphasis on, but not limited to Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. Africa has a diverse patchwork of mobile monies which are not necessarily the same in each country. For example today we received an enquiry for Tanzania and their mix of mobile money is not necessarily the same as other East or West African countries. The popular mobile monies in Tanzania for online payment are Airtel Money, Tigo Pesa and M-Pesa. In Kenya you are good to go with M-Pesa and a distant second is credit and debit cards when it comes to eCommerce sales which are generally a slightly higher LSM when it comes to retail. Nigeria is mainly debit cards and bank transfer and according to the World Bank less than 6% of Nigerians use mobile money as compared to Kenya where its more like 70%. Nigeria’s biggest mobile network recently received a license to provide financial services which will catalyse the rollout of MTN Mobile Money. South Africa is relatively simple from an online payments perspective and eCommerce merchants are good to go with debit and credit cards for eCommerce payments - mobile money is a non-starter for online payments in South Africa. Ghana is a friendly place for eCommerce merchants to get paid. Mobile money is the pervasive payment method for eCommerce payments including MTN Mobile Money and Airtel Money who together have a market share of more than 40%.