The Lion King | 9
have also been seen in the way bank-
ing is done. For example, UBA in the last
two years has seen a steep increase in
its e-banking transactions indicating the
changing habits of its more than seven
million customers.
UBA customers are increasingly relying
on UBA’s e-banking channels to carry
out their banking transactions. Trans-
actions on the bank’s mobile banking
platform have grown at an average
rate of 8.5% monthly in the last three
years. Internet banking has grown at
an average rate of 4% monthly while
Instant Money Transfer executed at UBA
business offices has also grown at an
average rate of 4.5% monthly within the
same period.
In all, while total e-banking transactions
has been growing at an average rate
of 3.4% monthly, offline transactions at
the branches have grown at a mar-
ginal rate of 0.5% monthly. This trend
shows that customers are increasingly
getting comfortable with de-personal-
ized banking or banking through UBA’s
convenient e-Channel options. It is in
response to these changing habits of
UBA’s many customers that the bank
has launched products to support their
online banking habits.
These products range from customized
debit and credit cards to e-commerce
platforms like U-Mall and internet and
mobile banking portals like U-Direct
and U-Mobile designed to facilitate
payments. These applications can be
remotely deployed to client’s websites.
Some of these portals are referred to as
transactional banking portals. Through
these e-channels customers can con-
veniently interact with their banks via
laptops, personal computers or mo-
bile devices such as iPads, and smart
phones.
Online Shopping
The increased penetration of internet
and mobile devices as well as e-pay-
ment solutions, like those provided by
UBA, has helped drive online shopping.
For example, in October 2013, UBA
backed the set up of U-Mall (https://
/) in response to the
rising appetite for online shopping by
Nigerians and Africans generally. U-Mall
essentially allows several small business
owners in different sectors of the econ-
omy open online stores hosted on a
single e-commerce platform to display
and sell their goods online to potential
shoppers on the internet.
Described as an online super mall,
retailers can set up retail space, display
and market their goods to different
buyers, providing variety and compet-
itive pricing for potential buyers. The
key benefit of U-Mall is that it removes
the entry barriers for SMEs looking for a
wider market for their goods through
an online platform. With this platform,
SMEs can sell their goods easily through
their U-Mall space. U-Mall also provides
a secondary platform for SME’s to easily
reach a higher number of potential cus-
tomers while retaining their traditional
brick and mortar shop.
Effectively, what U-Mall has done
for SMEs is to leverage the web and
e-banking to build an e-commerce
platform that provides convenient
shopping options for buyers and an
easy way of selling and receiving reve-
nues for the sellers. Consumers are able
to browse from one store to another
to look for great products and attrac-
tive bargains. Specifically, a consumer
can add items to his/her shopping cart
across multiple stores and once submit-
ted, the product requests are sent to
the respective merchants and the logis-
tics partner, and the selected products
delivered conveniently to the customer
as soon as payments are made.
UBA provides the payment solution that
powers transactions on U-Mall, backed
up with its efficient and secured
e-payment solution to enable buyers
purchase items seamlessly from U-Mall
using their payment cards.
Online Collections
UBA has also developed platforms that
enable electronic bill presentment and
collection services on behalf of large
firms that send out substantial volumes
of recurring bills. The bank’s ATMs are
also linked to internet banking platforms
which now facilitate e-commerce as
clients can make purchases, pay bills
and transfer funds via these machines
backed with enhanced security tools
for internet banking, which facilitates
e-commerce transactions.
Feature
Driving the
e-Commerce
Revolution
By Olawale Hamed and Yusuf Oladimeji
S
ales used to be a physical interac-
tion between buyers and sellers un-
til computers and internet entered
the picture. Now, platforms like U-Mall,
Amazon, Alibaba and many others
have changed the way traditional sales
are done globally.
The e-commerce trend is gradually
penetrating Africa, changing shopping
habits, with banks like UBA supporting
the take-off of e-commerce with ad-
vanced and
secured e-payment
solutions.
The
growth in e-com-
merce transac-
tions has been
largely driven by
the increasing
population of the
middle class es-
pecially amongst
Millennials (age
21 – 34) with recent
research showing
that persons within
this age bracket
spend a considera-
ble amount of their
time online.
Recent numbers
show that more
and more modern
consumers will browse
an item online via their
personal computers,
laptops and mobile de-
vices before committing to
buy them.
Similarly, the ratio of consum-
ers who buy an item after browsing
it online is increasing relatively for
some categories of items such as
electronic devices, service subscrip-
tions, entertainment, clothing, baby
products, airline ticket bookings and
hotel reservations.
The changing habits of people
