Jumia revs up vendor loans to supplement its marketplace revenues

Jumia, an NYSE public listed e-commerce firm, is speeding up its lending offerings to its thousands of vendors to supplement its marketplace revenues.

The firm, through JumiaPay, its payments division, is in the market hunting for lending officers to join its Jumia Lending team to rev up the lending processes to its thousands of vendors.

“Our loan officer will assist in the development of Jumia Lending in Kenya by presenting our solution to our sellers. He/she will be helping our sellers to apply for a loan, and with the help of the loan officer will review the data collected and the applications. The loan officer will be part of the JumiaPay team in Kenya and work side by side with the loan officer,” the firm announced.

The person will help sign up Jumia vendors to the platform, help advertise the Jumia lending solution to the vendors and assist the loan officer in the evaluation of loan requests.

This move was made public a few weeks ago when the NYSE listed firm announced it would be spinning-off its fintech arm JumiaPay to focus on payments, microloans, and ticketing as its new sources of revenue after it recorded an operating loss of €66.7 million.

Sacha Poignonnec and Jeremy Hodara, co-CEOs of Jumia said, “We remain focused on all aspects of our growth strategy, particularly JumiaPay, as we continue to drive its usage in our markets.”

JumiaPay is used in Nigeria, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Morocco and Kenya, where the Jumia marketplace works but there are plans for the service to be expanded beyond the marketplace. Jumia Lending will likely follow the same route.

Launched in 2012, Jumia has had many lives and through many struggles. With fraud eating up its revenues and increasing its operating losses. Jumia this year had to cut off suspicious vendors and staff. It also terminated its JForce agents who collaborated with employees in order to benefit from differences between commissions charged to sellers and higher commissions paid to JForce agents.

Jumia has also been slowed by the several class-action lawsuits filed against its IPO. With the launch of Jumia Lending under JumiaPay, the firm will supplement its revenues, bolster its operating capital and grow beyond e-commerce. Loans, ticketing and insurance are likely its savour from itself as ecommerce is still nascent in Africa.

Apart from Jumia Lending under its payment service JumiaPay, Jumia runs a logistics service, an online food ordering and delivery service, hotel and flight bookings and a booze delivery platform.

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