Nigeria, South Africa e-Commerce boosts international trade

… as Nigeria’s 2014 ePayments hit at $222bn

A leading e-commerce payment gateway,‎ PayU Nigeria, has stated that e-commerce in Nigeria and South Africa is increasing trade across nations’ borders and opening more people to active trade in the two nations and beyond.

According to PayU Nigeria’s country manager, Juliet Nwanguma, the e-commerce payment landscape in Nigeria is sophisticated and unique with intense competition, cooperation and innovation among market participants at all levels.

Nwanguma ascribes the success to improved regulatory oversight, increased awareness by consumers and stakeholders, and the growth of channels for transactions. Add to this an organised retail industry, a growing Nigerian middle class and the obvious appeal of convenience and you have an e-commerce recipe that South Africa can look to replicate.

As the size of the Nigerian economy and population have grown, says Nwanguma, so has the volume of electronic transactions. Nigeria’s total payments volume for 2014 was $222 billion, amounting to more than 526 million payment transactions in total; mobile and web payments equalled roughly 10 per cent of that amount.

“What we see at the cold face is that cross border transactions between South Africa and Nigeria are showing significant increases and this could play a pivotal role in the further development of the e-commerce market in both countries. Wider e-commerce success very often follows other mobile money services prevalent on the continent,” Nwanguma says.

According to a recent study conducted by Ipsos, a global market research company, cross-border shopping is a growing trend with around 80 per cent of shoppers going international when purchasing goods online.

“In Nigeria an impressive 47 percent of the online spend is already taken internationally, while in South Africa shopping across the continent continues to rise in popularity. The two countries are playing no small role in boosting eCommerce on the continent, offering a much-needed shift that can potentially have a positive impact on both economies,” the research firm noted.

Meanwhile, the Worldpay Global Payments Report 2015, found that the current global eCommerce market is worth around $1.66 trillion with an expected value of $2.4 trillion by 2019 – to date, an estimated 23 percent of this spend has taken place exclusively on a mobile device.

According to Ipsos, Nigeria, the largest market in Africa, has 147 million mobile connections with internet and mobile penetration rates averaging 59 per cent, along with growing internet and mobile users at 82 million and 93 million, respectively.