In the middle of Q1 2015, Konga, a leading eCommerce player in Nigeria launched its own payment processing solution called KongaPay.
While the move was widely praised as a smart strategy to reduce its exposure to cash transactions, close sales faster and offer value added services to its customers, it was obvious that Konga wanted to have a good cut of the payment process and mobile-wallet market.
Konga has now concluded plan to make KongaPay accessible to any other merchants who receive payments online. While this might require the company to tinker with its strategy of taking on its arch-rival Jumia on providing more products at affordable prices, Konga might have more to gain if it can use its already established customer base to diversify its revenue base.
As the eCommerce market get choked up by new entrants and niche players, revenue and transaction volumes of both Konga and Jumia, it is a wise decision to fully maximise KongaPay to shore up its revenue profile.
Severe Competition Awaits KongaPay
However, payment processing and mobile wallet category has in recent times seen bullish entrants. Major verticals to KongaPay such as SimplePay, PayStack and the ‘almighty’ QuickTeller by Interswitch are in the category to make KongaPay sit up as they prepare to take on the market.
On the offline retail side of things, Access Bank [ACCESS:NL] has launched PayWithCapture, Unified Payment launched PayAttitude and Heritage Bank introduced the OnPOS app. Other indirect competition such as Fuel Voucher are in the game to take a bite of the mobile payment market.
Konga acquired Zinternet in 2015 to create KongaPay. The company had since last year started using KongaPay on its site as a payment option and it has as well used DSTV Nigeria as a third party merchant on its site, where Konga customers can pay their subscription on the site. Perhaps the success of its DSTV partnership has made the company take a bigger bet on KongaPay. We look forward to the full take off of the plan.
