The global pandemic has affected consumer behavior across the various sectors and industries. As such, there has been a rise of digital behavior such as remote working, and learning, telemedicine, and delivery services.
There has been specifically a change in how East Africans work, purchase products & services, and even pay bills. The ensued crisis has not only changed global consumption but also caused a drastic shift from cash dependency to digital payments.
Where the average consumer is choosing to spend has shifted albeit total consumer spending being on the low across East Africa. Not only are people gravitating toward online channels for their household products but also for payment of bills and services. As the name suggests, a mobile wallet is an app that contains your debit and credit card information for you to spend online or on in-app.
The Pesapal Mobile app enables users to pay bills such as electricity, TV & Internet, buy airtime, Scan & Pay for products, get event tickets, book holidays and also pay for flight tickets. The app is essentially a lifestyle app that facilitates cashless payments & social distancing.
The pandemic is driving significant changes in consumer behavior that are likely to persist long lockdown and social distancing rules. For instance, digital banking is quickly being integrated to people’s daily lives as it is found to be more convenient.
In East Africa however, there is an opportunity in the longer-term to shift towards financial inclusion that could help get economies back on track faster after the crisis. The non-bank players like Pesapal are responding by adapting the products to help lower barriers to mobile banking and payments and bring more people into the cashless economy. The 220220 Paybill number can be used to pay for utility bills, buy airtime, and even book holidays and flight tickets on Ticketsasa.
Payment Solutions Providers (PSPs) & Governments have an important role to play in helping business activity resume in the short term. With more businesses turning to electronic and social commerce, fraud has equally become more complex. The big players in e-commerce are relying on machine learning to mitigate fraudulent activities; a solution that most SMEs can not afford to invest resources in.
Consequently, Pesapal is supporting merchants to fight fraudulent operations’ costs by reducing charge-backs and manual review rates. For end-consumers, the functionality of Pesapal’s Payment Page on a merchant’s website provides a wide array of payment options that are secure. SMEs on the other hand are able to track their sales, reconcile their payments, and maintain their customer data without much technical investment on their end.
A decrease in payment service fees as a result of local governments suppressing fees due to the COVID-19 crisis, has helped in driving up transaction volumes. The possible consequence is the absolute size of the East African payments market has potentially increased.
However, there needs to be fewer personal contacts in B2B operations especially in the supply chain where a hoard of paperwork is involved. With Pesapal's invoicing tool your business can not only send branded e-invoices but also get in-depth reporting for your business to ensure that all your collections are on track.
Pesapal provides resources to SMEs to support their transition to e-commerce and promote interoperability between physical and digital-payments. All these through the merchant accounts that you can create when requesting for the service.
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