eCommerce In Nigeria: Online transactions

After some hours of researching today, I noticed that some sites still don't include Nigeria in their country list during sign up hence do not need Nigerians on their site. This could be as a result of the past encounters they had with fraudsters. However I was happy that ClickBank which is an affiliate platform for affiliate marketers now accepts Nigerians. What they really don't know is that not all Nigerians are fraudsters and there is a good percentage of Nigerians who want to make clean and legitimate money. Even Profitclicking recognises that fact as most of its members are Nigerians.

With the high level of unemployment and cheap access to Internet services, a research I made showed that most youths are always hooked on to their mobile phones, smartphones, laptops or surf the Internet at cyber cafes looking for jobs and  any other genuine way to make money.

However most payment methods don't give Nigerians the full capacity to invest in various online programs, most people still find a way to fund online accounts because of their interest in making a few bucks on the internet. For instance, some sites only support Paypal, Visa, Net teller, Payza and so on  without  considering that not all internet novices can have access to such methods especially Paypal which accept Nigerians but doesn't give us full privileges.

Nigerian banks on the other hand, help to make online transactions difficult, thanks to GTBank, UBA, Access and Zenith Bank that have helped in  achieving at lest 5% success in online transactions. GTBank's Naira MasterCard, UBA Africard and Access Visa are mostly supported for most online transactions and Western Union. Note that, Nigerians don't use credit cards except for a few gurus who have VCCs Virtual Credit Cards see gurusforum.com, epaymonster.com.

Thanks to Quickteller and Paga for their online banking solutions too. Most online shops like Konga, Jumia, Kaymu and Deaaldey have also integraated ecommerce in their websites. This has made it very convenient for people to buy stuff online.

In conclusion, I'd advise that most sites consider Nigerians in their payment methods and to do that a few steps should be taken:

• Add Visa, Verve, Mastercard, Visa electron to payment options, Most Nigerian banks issue it.
• Add Interswitch to payment and withdrawal options, most Nigerian ATM cards use it.
• Add Webmoney and other ecurrencies to payment and withdrawal options, it's readily available and easy to use.
• Add Western Union, it can be found in all Nigerian banks. 

I believe that if this is done many Nigerians will fully embrace ecommerce? Think it through... Proudly Nigerian