A Ray of Hope during COVID-19: Xente
E-commerce in Uganda is rapidly growing and is expected to shortly become the second largest online market in the East Africa region, after Kenya. Our e-commerce market offers a wide range of goods and services, including the possibility to pay taxes online.
According to a report by Contador Harrison, Ugandans in the age group 30–40 are the biggest online spenders. There has been an especially rapid boost in this growth during the COVID-19 outbreak. One of the e-commerce platforms we have been able to engage with is Xente!
Xente is an e-commerce and financial services marketplace platform. It’s like amazon and a bank, all in one. 50,000+ people and 50+ rely on us to deliver airtime, data, tickets, food, groceries, home and office supplies and so much more every month. They can pay now, pay later or pay installments.
The Xente team believes that they have a duty to support growth of the economies in which they operate through good and bad times. The Covid-19 outbreak has definitely made Xente put their mission of driving a culture that focuses on delighting our customers into action. The team believes that by being empathetic to customers’ wants and needs they in turn deliver a high quality service. What it means now and for the future, is that they understand that even in these dark times, there is an opportunity to navigate this crisis by embracing digitization at a personal and business level.
For Ugandan merchants, who sell physical products, Xente can quickly shift your sales channel mix from person-to-person and physical stores to new digital and online channels. The team will put special emphasis on Buy Uganda, Build Uganda (BUBU) businesses especially during this pandemic period.
Micro Merchants do not have to worry about setup fees because Xente is waiving them! The platform will also not charge commission for 3 months specifically for micro merchants.
“If your finance processes rely on cash and manual paper work for example handling petty cash in the office, paying workers with cash, shopping from physical stores for office supplies with cash — we can help you quickly shift to modern digital and cashless processes. For any business that wants to eliminate manual and cash processes in their business, we will assign a customer success manager to help you get started FREE of charge.” Allan added
“As people and employees stay at home, they still need essential lifestyle items to stay alive. Using our tools they can order whatever they need and will deliver to them. They will also find our financing options where they can pay later or pay installments, especially now when cash is tight, quite handy.
I would also like to add that we are an open platform; so we encourage other lenders to use our platform for purpose lending.” The CEO of Xente, Allan Rwakatungu
Xente’s vision is to connect every person and every business in Africa to the global digital economy.
Author: Justine Nansubuga Andrea (Member success associate at Outbox)
