16 Comments

Chief, big fan and promoter here.

I'd bet Jumia's next play is an online payments one across all 11 countries they are in.

Where make I put address for the merch? 😜

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Hello there. A new reader of your newsletters from Twitter. Just clocking this can also be a social space for interaction on insightful topics like this, and it's nice, it's on a lighter note.

Ok, now to my comment proper. Take it from a guy who works in an Equipment finance startup. Typical Nigerians would go to any lengths to default/evade repayments.

Also considering the FX impact on the prices of phones and devices (and inflation). The markup to cater for that would be a high interest rate for the end user.

Lastly deploying asset recovery officers to customers locations would be too tedious to manage, seeing that Jumia have also outsource logistics, but if they outsource the recovery operations entirely, they could keep a lean model (hmm)

In a nutshell, with a good model to mitigate these aforementioned risks, in a sane country, it should be a success, but Nigerians still part of Nigeria's problem. So....

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The major problem with lending in Nigeria has always been the recovery of those loans and that is why you find the rates to be abnormally high especially with these fintechs that are littered all around Lagos.

I receive at least 3 SMS and WhatsApp messages per week on "ä contact of mine defaulting". Now if Jumia wants to do this, it needs to find a way to recover the loans without resorting to those crude tactics of messaging all your contacts to inform them you are a debtor who is fleeing from paying back.

I also suspect Nigerians may have a cultural problem of collecting money and not wanting to pay it back.

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First of all, make me the random pick for the merch *blows powder*

I hate that members of my generation are having to do adulting in a Nigeria where having a side hustle is somewhat of a norm. I do agree with the point Choco raised as to the stringency of the process of opening corporate accounts with legacy banks. Still, I'm glad to see the techbros getting their disrupting hats on in that regard.

If everyone was me, the BNPL model will fail woefully as I just can't deal with debt in any form and I've perfected the art of delayed gratification until my coins are complete.

Finally, I'm glad to note that we both read the T. B. Joshua piece over the week.

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Just wondering. Realistically, wouldn’t this mean Jumia would, like Digital lenders, eventually resort to public shaming when Nigerians start being Nigerians?

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If startups are going to offer businesses cooperate accounts with no too much documentation required, don’t you think this will make it less reliable since (for e.g scammers that has filled up the SMEs space) could easily get this done?? Because just maybe the reason why traditional banks are making it quite difficult to open cooperate accounts (except the Nigerian factor we all know) is to maximize full length in accreditation.

Or do you think there’s a simpler way we can get around this and also make it authentic at the same time??

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Carbon Zero doesn't charge a mark-up on the merchant's price.

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