In less than a year after introducing its services to Nigeria, Paypal has revealed that Nigeria is its second biggest market in Africa.
PayPal’s Head of Business Development, sub-Saharan Africa, Malvina Goldfeld revealed this with expression of satisfaction of PayPal’s incredible success in Nigeria since it was officially launched in July 2014.
“We are very happy to see that PayPal has been widely welcomed by Nigerians since the launch of the service in the country last year,” Goldfeld said.
With more than one million active accounts, South Africa is PayPal’s largest market in Africa; Nigeria and Kenya follow closely.
Goldfeld said PayPal is meeting the needs of Nigerians that purchase goods and services on foreign platforms.
“There are millions of people in Nigeria who are eager to engage in online commerce and our goal is to help them make payments more easily and securely. Currently, we offer Nigerians the opportunity to register for free for a PayPal account to make payments on overseas websites,” she said.
But PayPal’s relationship with Nigerian users is one-sided. Nigerians are only allowed to send payments abroad through the platform. Users are unable to receive moneymoney at the moment, and even though Nigerian internet users have continuously demanded for this feature, PayPal and Goldfeld have been elusive as to if and when the service will be accessible to Nigerians.
“Nigeria is a very interesting market and over time we may expand our presence, but for now we are satisfied to help Nigerians register for free for a PayPal account and make payments on overseas websites,” she said.
When PayPal introduced its services to Nigerians last year, it signed up tens of thousands of users within its first week as consumers scrabbled to purchase goods from foreign e-commerce sites. Before then, PayPal was inaccessible to Nigerians even though much smaller African countries like Tanzania, Kenya, Chad and Mauritius were included in PayPal’s network. It is generally believed that the online payment processor avoided Nigeria for many years owing to its reputation as a hub for internet-related fraud.
Last year, PayPal made its entry into Nigeria and 9 other countries – Belarus, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Monaco, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe and Paraguay, bringing the total number of countries under the PayPal network to 203.
