Scintilla Africa, an indigenous tech startup, has launched a gifting app called Pay It Forward (PIF) designed to help Nigerians in diaspora send gifts to loved ones in Nigeria.
The gifting app already has global reach, with presence in the United Kingdom, United States of America, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Ukraine, Denmark, and other countries to come.
The Digital Marketing Manager of Scintilla Africa, Daniel Chukwu, said the primary motivation for releasing the product was to find ways Nigerians could share love through gifting, while supercharging cross border retail and empowering local businesses by connecting them to the global gifting market.
Highlighting the role PIF plays in helping local businesses in Nigeria, the co-founder of Scintilla Africa as well as Global Sales and Marketing Director of PIF, Toby Nwanede, said diaspora remittances is a massive market and by enabling gifting through PIF, Nigerian businesses can tap into that global market.
“The diaspora remittance market is undeniably substantial, with a yearly flow of over $20 billion. By facilitating the ability of Nigerians in diaspora to shop with Nigerian businesses from anywhere in the world, we are achieving two crucial objectives: enabling local businesses to access the diaspora market and allowing Nigerian businesses to tap into the global gifting market as well,” Nwanede said.
Nwanede also noted that PIF is extending its support platform to foundations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), offering them seamless access to assistance in the form of monetary contributions or non-monetary aid.
He said PIF has already established partnerships with organisations such as the Nigerian Red Cross Society and Lagos Food Bank.
“Right now, one of the major things we want to do is we want to ensure that when you look at the charity organisations, the NGOs, we want to sort of democratise the way that they receive donations. So at Red Cross, for example, right now, they would rely heavily on corporate donors. So these are big organizations who give them money or who give them some of the products that they sell.
“Through PIF, organisations like the Lagos Food Bank and Nigerian Red Cross, with whom we have established a partnership, can gain the ability to receive support and donations from any location. This means that individuals like Toby in Nigeria can easily contribute essential items, such as groceries, to these organisations using a PIF ID which is like a username.They can get donated items from our retail partners,” Nwanede said.
Nwanede said the firm will position PIF as the sort of de facto platform for gifting and supporting, where there are natural disasters, refugee situation, situations such as flood or hunger warning on going in northern Nigeria.
The Marketing Coordinator of PIF, Charles Emmanuel, added that currently, there are other use cases of the product with more to come.
“The current use cases are: Peer to peer, donations or support and incentive distribution. At the core of all of these use cases is the culture of giving and sharing, and creating memorable moments for people – which is what drives us at PIF,” he said.
