Cellulant and Copia Global partner to enable payments for its diaspora and urban customers

By Edlyn Cardoza

Copia Global, the B2C e-commerce platform providing e-commerce solutions for the rapidly growing 800 million middle to low-income African consumers, has announced a partnership with Cellulant, a Pan-African Payments technology company, to simplify payments for its diaspora and urban customers.

This partnership enables Copia’s diaspora and urban customers to conveniently initiate transactions and purchases for their loved ones in rural areas in Kenya using the Cellulant network. This provides greater choice, affordability, and convenience for urban and rural shoppers shopping for everyday items.

“We are deeply committed to simplifying e-commerce in Africa and are excited to collaborate with Cellulant in expanding Copia’s market reach. This will enable us to provide diaspora and urban customers with alternative and convenient payment options when they shop on Copia’s platform for friends and family across Kenya and Uganda,” said Tim Steel, Chief Executive Officer, Copia Global.

Remittance inflows to Kenya have increased tenfold in the last fifteen years, reaching an all-time high of 3.72 million dollars in 2021, according to the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK). For many Kenyans, as in many African nations, digital payments made by diasporans to rural families provide a financial lifeline to millions of households. Diasporans and people living in urban areas can use Copia’s online platform to pay for goods and deliver them to friends and family back home.

“We are delighted to be Copia’s payments technology partner enabling consumers in the diaspora to make purchases seamlessly,” said Akshay Grover, Chief Executive Officer of Cellulant. “As the African e-commerce and payments landscape in Africa continues to evolve, we believe that fintechs and e-commerce platforms need to have a deeper collaboration in expanding opportunities that will help ease payments and collections for businesses and their consumers across all sectors of the economy.”

In recent years, Cellulant has led the charge in simplifying payments for a wide range of businesses in various sectors, such as airlines, telecoms, e-commerce platforms, and ride-hailing companies, among others processing about USD 14 billion in 2021 alone.

Cellulant provides a single digital payments platform – Tingg- that addresses the complex payments needs of businesses. Tingg makes it easy to collect and make payments across multiple payment methods in different currencies, with the best customer experience for any company looking to digitise its payments.

Copia combines mobile technology, over 40,000 digitally enabled local agents, and an innovative last-mile logistics system to provide a broad product offering efficient, reliable delivery to rural consumers. The streamlined process allows customers to give the phone number of a friend or family member at checkout, and Copia will do the rest, including locating the recipient, identifying the nearest delivery center agent, and delivering the goods.