Tag: africa mobile commerce

A new report from the GSMA has shown that smartphone shopping and transactions are on the rise.

The most recent GSMA: Mobile 360 Series report, which focused on the Africa conference, showed that digital and m-commerce are rapidly rising in Africa and that this is being greatly driven by a boost in internet penetration throughout the continent.

The report’s findings were based on consumer research data that was collected in March 2015 by Ipsos.

What the report showed was that 20 percent of internet users in South Africa have made a purchase online either over computers or m-commerce. It also revealed that an additional 48 percent said that they expected to shop online in the future. It also said that mobile shopping will become a key component in the growth of the overall digital commerce market within Sub-Saharan Africa, since most internet users within that part of the world will be accessing the internet by way of smartphones and other mobile devices.

These findings and conclusions align well with those made by other m-commerce focused reports.

A survey released by In Mobi in 2014 was already showing that 83 percent of consumers said that they intended to shop online over a smartphone or tablet in the following year. This was an increase of 15 percent over that firm’s figures from 2013 and it involved the participation of 14,000 people across 14 different countries.

This is only being helped by the fact that there are now several established online shopping sites within the Sub-Saharan African region and many of them are offering transactions that can be conducted cross-border. Jumia stands out among them. It has been around since 2012, at which time it was launched through the funding provided by Rocket Internet. That company has been greatly successful and has undergone a considerable expansion throughout that part of the continent, starting in Nigeria, but moving outward to a number of other countries such as Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Cameroon and Senegal.

A central component of Jumia’s strategy is m-commerce. It has already entered in to partnerships with Millicom and MTN to push growth into the future through increases in traffic from mobile users by way of promotions, cross-selling, joint advertising campaigns and payment facilitation.

Banking organization releases new mobile commerce application

Standard Bank, a pan-African banking organization, has launched a new mobile payments application called SnapScan. Mobile commerce is becoming quite popular in Africa, especially as more people in various countries gain access to smartphones and tablets. The proliferation of mobile technology is having a major impact on commerce and the demand for mobile services is beginning to grow at a dramatic rate. In order to accommodate demand, organizations like Standard Bank have been releasing new services that are mobile-centric in nature.

SnapScan leverages QR codes to initiate mobile transactions

The new SnapScan service is meant to give consumers the ability to participate in mobile commerce through the use of QR codes. The application can scan these codes and initiative a mobile transaction. The codes can be associated with any sort of product or service and have become a very popular mobile commerce tool in recent years. These codes are quite easily produced and, in most cases, can be made for free, which is one of the reasons they are particularly popular among retailers and in the marketing field.

10,000 merchants in Africa accept payments from SnapScan app

Some 10,000 merchants throughout Africa have partnered with Standard Bank in order to accept mobile payments coming from the SnapScan application. These merchants provide consumers with unique QR codes. Once the code is scanned and a payment has been issued, merchants receive an SMS message that verifies that the payment has been received successfully. SnapScan may become more popular in Africa as more consumers make use of the application and see its merits.

Security remains a major challenge for mobile commerce

Many people favor mobile commerce because of its convenience, but consumers are also wary of the mobile space because of the security threats that exist therein. Security has been a major problem for mobile commerce for some time, as it is a popular target for malicious groups that seek to exploit financial information. If organizations can find a way to boost the security of the services that they provide, they are likely to find success in the mobile space.