Safaricom To Venture Into E-Commerce Next Month

Safaricom, Kenyan telecoms giant, is to launch its “Masoko” E-commerce portal in the weeks ahead to take on dominant players like Jumia and Kilimall. Safaricom is said to be in its late stages of announcing an online shop for electronics and other services, paid for via award-winning M-Pesa. Now we all know all other payments online that use M-Pesa or other mobile money services like Airtel Money, Orange money and Yukash require some long process. Safaricom being the owner of the game, could make this a bit more streamlined, as they don’t require an API to implement integration to the specific service.

The development is among the meaningful ventures by the company which earns a big chunk of its revenues from mobile money services and through operating mobile network services in the country.

In May during the company’s full year 2017 results release, Safaricom had announced it would leverage on its M-Pesa mobile money platform to make this project a reality.

“Masoko is meant to be an avenue for local merchants, including supermarkets, and customers to interact and trade in a bid for Safaricom to boost its M-Pesa payments platform. Masoko is said to stock various items from tech products to fashion products and even food products.”

The launch will be in cooperation with Sendy, a logistics firm that uses a mobile technology to connect drivers to customers. Its worth noting that Sendy is financially backed by Safaricom.

Though it remains unclear when exactly the e-commerce site will make its debut, a launch is expected to take place before the month of August comes to a close.

Update

Safaricom has now set the new launch date for March 2018.