Jumia Partners With NBE, Offers Financial Services

Pan-African eCommerce platform, Jumia, has partnered with the biggest state-owned bank in Egypt, the National Bank of Egypt (NBE), to offer some financial services through its payment channels and business lines, JumiaPay. 

This partnership comes in after the NBE obtained an approval-in-principle from The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) to engage JumiaPay in processing off-the-platform payments for third-party merchants on the Jumia eCommerce marketplace in Egypt.

As a result of the partnership, some services are now licenced on the JumiaPay business line for Egyptians, these services are Payment Service Provider (PSP), Payment Facilitator (PayFac) and Payment Aggregator (PA).

These licences will allow for ease of online banking, a medium for merchants to integrate several payment modes and also enable the onboarding process of customers for electronic payments on the platform. 

News of this partnership was revealed in Jumia Reports Second Quarter 2021 Results(PDF) which was released Tuesday, August 10, 2021. According to the report, the platform believes this partnership is a step in the right direction for The Jumia Group. 

Initially launched as JumiaOne in September 2017, the JumiaPay initiative is the fintech vertical angle of the Jumia eCommerce platform, established as a third-party payment solution to provide a secure and rapid payment system for merchants and service providers.

Although, the question as to how JumiaPay intends to navigate a competition with Fawry, an Egyptian mobile money startup that is already a Unicorn, is not uncalled for. 

With the current promising outlook of the eCommerce sector in Egypt, this partnership might go a long way in helping JumiaPay scale amidst Egypt’s stringent Know-Your-Customer (KYC) requirements, and a hopeful extension of this to other African countries.