MallforAfrica launched last year, with the premise of enabling African consumers to shop from Western retailers.
With the MallforAfrica app, rather than using the retailer’s checkout, you use the checkout on the MallforAfrica tool bar. MallforAfrica then complete your purchase and arrange for the products to be onward shipped to Africa for delivery to your door or the pick up location you’ve selected.
Now Techcrunch Africa,Kenya,MallforAfrica,Marketplaces,Nigeria,PayPal report that eBay are partnering with MallforAfrica which will allow Africans to purchase from eBay with a new “eBay Powered by MallforAfrica” app. Initially sales will be from eBay US consumer sellers and US business sellers with a feedback rating over 300, to customers in Nigeria and then Kenya with other African nations to follow.
MallforAfrica will handle all payments and logistics. That’s a good thing as unsurprisingly in Africa PayPal isn’t the only finance company in town. US sellers will simply receive payments in US$ without having to worry about local currencies and different payment operators across the African nations. Shipping will be just as painless – similarly to eBay’s Global Shipping Program, a US seller who gets a MallforAfrica sale shouldn’t notice any difference compared to selling to a US seller.
Africa is a big market, largely untapped by western ecommerce. MallforAfrica aim to be the bridge between the two, removing any local trading idiosyncrasies for online retailers as well as taking away fraud concerns. It makes sense for eBay to partner with a marketplace which is already growing. Africa is too big to be ignored.
2 Responses
do sellers get an opt-out?
i have zero trust left for ebay, i just know they’re going to turn round and say “you have two days to collect your item from Nigeria before we refund the customer”
on almost every parcel.
Or the message, ‘ the buyer is asking if he can transfer £3 million to your account but will need you to pay his fees first before he can send it’ as going by all the emails we have got over the years from Nigeria there are loads of people who want to move money out the country but they need some cash first (or ebay scammed parcels – if ebay scams still exist….)