A new report shows that demand for Pay-As-You-Go financing for products in East African will shoot up in 2022 as more consumers will opt for alternative payment solutions instead of cash payment.
According to the latest data by Angaza, a provider of sales and customer management technology for last-mile distributors, most consumers are unable to pay for sophisticated products like smartphones and TVs, despite an increase in their demand.
Angaza Customer Success Director Peter Thuo says the Pay-As-You-Go model shows excellent potential to help consumers in emerging markets access products they previously could not afford through flexible payment terms.
The latest data from Angaza, the leading provider of sales and customer management technology for last-mile distributors, shows that despite an increase in demand for sophisticated products like smartphones and TVs, the majority of consumers are unable to pay for these items upfront.
The Angaza Customer Success Director Peter Thuo says the Pay-As-You-Go model shows great potential to help consumers in emerging markets access products they previously could not afford through flexible payment terms.
“Pay-as-you-go (PAYGo) financing has in the past been used to help more low-income consumers in emerging markets access basic services.
We are now seeing a paradigm shift as more middle-income earners are seeking this financing model in a bid to access more sophisticated durable products like smartphones, TVs, and fridges that they cannot pay for upfront,” he says.
He adds that the model also supports distribution businesses in selling any product to reflect their consumers’ unique needs.
The firm has partnered with over 25 manufacturers, including Burn Manufacturing, Samsung, NuovoPay, and SureChill, to provide distributors with the opportunity to sell clean cookstoves, smartphones, and other transformative products on the Angaza Hub.
With COVID-19 still causing havoc world over as there are strict guidelines on physical contact, Angaza has partnered with over 60 mobile money providers across 25 countries to make payments for products convenient for consumers and to enable cashless operations for distributors.
“The option of mobile money has led to a significant decrease in cash usage over the past few years, enabling consumers to pay at any time, from anywhere while saving distributors the cost of physically collecting payments. We are very excited about distributors’ strong interest in the Angaza platform to get transformative products like smartphones, electronics, and cookstoves into the hands of millions of consumers around the world,” explains Thuo.
Last year the firm received Kenyan shillings 1.3 billion (about Shs40 billion) in Series B financing to support efforts to scale customer service and commercial business teams, primarily located in Nairobi, Kenya.