22 Nov African Online Payment Trends We Can Expect Into The Future for eCommerce Companies Entering the Territory - Part 1
Our research department came across an awesome article describing the emerging fintech trends which I believe are influencing paytech and online payments for eCommerce companies expanding across Africa and looking for payment at the checkout. Appropriately named Jesus, he sees into the future by bringing together last year’s high levels from Capgemini, Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey reports to give us simply great insights into the latest and possibly future trends in paytech across Africa. He mentions some main trends which I discuss below Open banking This means that all sorts of payment technologies and reporting can and will be built on top of existing banking capabilities which is usually a bit lethargic and not very innovative. I suspect that this trend emerged out of the crypto hypothesis of having a base layer for eg bitcoin or ethereum which is secure and trusted and allows all sorts of creative and innovative initiatives to be built on top of it to meet diverse consumer demands for responsiveness, utility and ease of use. So we can expect a liquorice all sorts of experimentations which the consumer will decide on for adoption. Mobile Wallets At African Payment Solutions we are seeing a variety of wallets with similar functionality coming out of banks, fintechs, paytechs and startups and looking for consumer adoption. The market will decide which of these is going to fly. What it does mean is that on this mobile centric continent, wallets make perfect sense and will be as successful as their level of interoperability and adoption. Unless of course a Libra eventually gets to market and financially powers its (almost) 150m users - can you imagine what that will do to trade across Africa! Contactless payments Personally I have a strong feeling that QR codes are going to be the winner on the African continent - they are easily understood, used pervasively, and are mobile friendly. Nice and simple to use for the merchant and the consumer. This has become the way to pay in the East with Wechat and Alipay. If the card associations have their way then it could be contactless payments which has been around for ages and is now getting traction in developed countries so why not in Africa, But it does require a significant investment in deployment of technology to support it as opposed to QR codes which are on a piece of paper and enabled on every newly deployed mobile phone. TO BE CONTINUED Click here for linking up your eCommerce business for African payments Thank you to BBVA for these keen insights: https://www.bbvaresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/2018-12_Watch-Payments_ENG.pdf