Konga.com has announced its decision to become a prepay only platform. This decision was taken as part of its measures to become more efficient and to focus on the orders that consumers really want.

Providing further explanation on the decision, the CEO, Mr. Shola Adekoya said: “In recent years, we have explored several solutions for payment and ecommerce in Nigeria and concluded that prepay is the necessary approach for our business and the market. Given the cost of inflation and increasing challenges managing payment-on-delivery, as well as the resulting level of order cancellations on the platform, we had to take this decision. We will continue to review other ways to provide payment-on-delivery to customers, but for the time being, we will remain a prepay only platform. We have enabled a contact seller button that allows open communication between and seller and buyer in cases where pay on delivery transactions still want to be carried out directly between the seller and the buyer.”

Konga.com transformed to a prepay only platform in mid-November 2017, and there has been a solid shift towards online payment by customers. “Since we switched over, we have seen a marked increase in online payment which is a much more seamless experience and we sincerely appreciate all our customers who have trusted us enough to begin paying online for their orders” said Mr Adekoya.

Further explaining the implications of this action for the business, Mr. Adekoya said: “This decision means that we can run a more efficient business and focus our energies on orders that we are sure customers want. It also means that our operating costs will be lower, putting us on a better track. In line with this new approach, today we are announcing an internal restructuring to align our operations with the prepay only model and our intention to stop warehousing activities. Unfortunately, this will result in a headcount reduction. Letting go of colleagues and friends is not an easy decision, but one that naturally stems from these changes”.

“Our Customers, Merchants and Franchisees should expect to see an improvement in service quality, which continues to be the core of our business approach. We hope that the financial industry, which has made significant improvements since when we started in 2012, will work with us to find simpler solutions for customers to make payments online”.

Enquiries should be directed to: media@konga.com

I believe it is still in the experimental stage, good way to go but they need to do more and place more strategies so that they can break even and expand like Jumia