Jumia, the African e-commerce is looking go deeper into the digital lending market by offering quick, small, digital, personal loans. However, these are efforts to resurrect from the cash hemorrhage that has plagued its e-commerce business by pursuing growth across other verticals.
With the Jumia One, the lifestyle app, users can borrow loans up to 100,00o thousand naira. They can have access to instant micro-loans without collateral and with competitive interest rate and repayment plans, much like regular payday lenders.
Before Jumia started to offer personalized loans, its lending service was targeted to verified merchants on its e-commerce platform as well as businesses across Africa. Therefore, with its recent announcement, Jumia is extending its loan service to quick personal loans targeted at individuals who use the Jumia One Android app.
While the news of Jumia offering lending services might not be totally new; In December 2019, Quickcheck, a micro-lending mobile platform that also provides collateral-free loans in emerging markets, announced partnerships with Jumia and PayAttitude. QuickCheck has been the only credit provider for the Jumia customers. The partnership with Jumia gave Quickcheck the license to provide their customers with access to loans through its own credit-scoring algorithm used for underwriting of borrowers.
