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Mall for Africa launches e-commerce platform for consumers

By Editor
19 July 2016   |   12:06 pm
To meet the needs of Nigerian consumers, the Mall for Africa group has formally launched an e-commerce platform for buying goods in international market using local currency.

To meet the needs of Nigerian consumers, the Mall for Africa group has formally launched an e-commerce platform for buying goods in an international market using local currency.

The online platform, with over 12,000 brands from 150 stores in the United States and the United Kingdom, is aimed at break barriers to international commerce by addressing the needs of foreign exchange and global shipping.

Founder of Mall for Africa, Tope Folayan, said that the platform was established based on the need to provide “a seamless, easy, secure and efficient way for Africans to shop directly from international stores.”

Folayan said that the platform was the first–of-its-kind online mall, which would allow Nigerian shoppers buy online in Naira, without having to bother endlessly about picking up and forwarding purchases.

Currently operational in Nigeria, Kenya, the UK and the U.S., Mall for Africa has a market expansion vision of providing service across sub-Saharan Africa and including on its list of stores Nigerian businesses, who seek to expand their service provisions across the continent.

Co-founder, Chris Folayan, noted that before the advent of Mall for Africa, the situation of shopping online from reputable UK and U.S. stores was highly challenging because of the constant denial of Nigerian payment sources, coupled with the refusal of Most stores to ship directly to Nigerian Markets.

But through the application that could be downloaded on the line, he said buyers could now shop any store in the UK and the U.S. such as Amazon, E-bay, and have their items delivered anywhere in the Country.

He said: “They can select the items they want and with four clicks have the items purchased and shipped to them in Africa.

“A further advantage to shopping with Mall for Africa is the elimination of needless extra luggage charges. Gone are the days where customers would depend on the good will or convenience of relatives and friends coming into the country to get their purchased items delivered to them; or even having to deal with the challenges relating to purchases getting shipped to the wrong locations from where retrieval becomes an issue. Mall for Africa is a safer, cheaper and easy alternative.

“Further-more Mall for Africa is able to give reduced shipping costs through its bulk purchase orders. The platform is able to deliver purchases way below quoted costs of Online stores who have recently begun shipping directly to Nigeria,” he said.

Customers have the option of home delivery or receive their goods through pick up points. MFA currently has pickup locations in Lagos, Abuja, Kano, Ibadan, Port Harcourt, Bayelsa and Warri with plans to expand to other cities soon.

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