Safaricom has today announced a partnership with Ant Financial Services that will allow Kenyans to shop on AliExpress and pay for their purchases using M-PESA. The move will help more Kenyans to be able to buy products from the eCommerce platform and pay via payment platform they are familiar with.
Kenyans shopping on Aliexpress.com will be presented with M-PESA as one of the payment options when checking out their shopping cart on the app or website. Once customers select M-PESA, they will then key in their mobile phone numbers and will subsequently receive a prompt on their phones to type their M-PESA PIN to complete the payment.
Customers will be able to select M-PESA as a payment method and then have their total cost displayed in Kenya Shillings with standard Lipa Na M-PESA Paybill charges applicable for each transaction. Shoppers will also have the option of using their post office box numbers as the delivery location for their items.
The service is already live on the AliExpress app and will be available on the AliExpress website in coming weeks.
This new service is being offered under the M-Pesa Global banner. Previous initiatives has seen M-Pesa customers being able to send and receive money through M-Pesa. Through Western Union for instance, customers are able to send money bank accounts in some countries and to more than 500,000 Western Union agent locations. They are also working with PayPal to enable customers to top up their PayPal accounts and also send money to their M-Pesa account from PayPal.
Amazon recently enabled payments for purchases on their platform in cash via Western Union. These initiatives are good because they are allowing ordinary Kenyans without debit or credit cards to be able to purchase products on these International eCommerce platforms.