Egypt’s biggest state lender National Bank of Egypt (NBE) and Africa’s largest e-commerce firm Jumia announced on Sunday the launch of JumiaPay Egypt as the payment service provider after obtaining the necessary licenses from the country’s central bank.
JumiaPay is a digital payment and fintech platform that facilitates online payments and the distribution of a broad range of digital and financial services.
The platform will act as a payment services provider offering payment facilitation (PayFac) for merchants and as a payment processor allowing merchants to process payments outside Jumia’s main platform.
“Merchants can properly manage the acceptance of digital payments through a single central digital platform instead of undergoing long and overpriced processes with direct integration for their different local and international payment methods.” Tawfik Mahmoud, managing director of JumiaPay Egypt, said.
“Referring to our strategic partnership with Zbooni as a payment solutions provider enables us to penetrate and support the SMEs sector and allow us to contribute to facilitating e-commerce and financial services transactions in Egypt by providing convenient, secure and easy-to-use payment solutions.”
“We just did our first off-platform transaction, we’re currently in the beta phase and the integration of some merchants, after which we will be ready to expand as the number of JumiaPay transactions increased by one third to 3 million in the third quarter of the 2021 year, representing approximately 36 percent of the platform orders for the group level,”
JumiaPay is set to offer unique payment processing models that enable the digital economy via convenient, secure and easy-to-use payment solutions which in return will help to enhance trust between consumers and other businesses. Therefore, it would contribute to enhancing financial inclusion and digital transformation in Egypt and Africa in general.
Hesham Safwat, chief executive of Jumia Egypt said the new platform is in line with the overall direction of the Egyptian state to transform into a cashless society and the move towards financial inclusion in Egypt.
“We are proud of our partnership with Jumia which targets a large number of customers through its pioneering services and we are looking forward through this partnership to provide new services via JumiaPay,” said Mohamed Jamil, head of Alternative Channels and Retail at National Bank of Egypt.
Ramy Assaf, chief executive and co-founder of Zbooni, said: “Egypt is a highly important market for our strategic growth and this partnership with JumiaPay, as well as our strengthened relationship with the National Bank of Egypt, can provide the catalyst.”
