Online shopping platform Amazon has partnered with Western Union to introduce a new payment platform that will allow Kenyan customers to use local currency to pay for their virtual purchases.
In the partnership, Western Union will be responsible for overseeing Amazon’s fresh international payment option dubbed Amazon Paycode by managing all e-commerce transactions registered on the platform.
In the event that an Amazon customer wants to make a purchase from Kenya, he or she will be required to select the PayCode option on the amazon checkout page. Once this is done a code will be sent to the customer with guidelines on how to complete the purchase via a designated Western Union agent around their location.
The payment option, which has already been introduced in other countries such as Chile, Colombia, Hong Kong and Indonesia, will, according to Mani Sundaram the General Manager of Emerging Payments at Amazon, bring convenience to the seller’s customers.
“Amazon is committed to enabling customers anywhere in the world to shop on Amazon.com, and a big part of that is to allow customers to pay for their cross-border online purchases in a way that is most convenient for them”, said Mr. Sundram.
On his part, Khalid Fellahi, the General Manager of Western Union Digital, attributed the move to the need to serve buyers who cannot access accepted payment methods on Amazon.
“We’re helping to unlock access to Amazon.com for customers who need and want items that can only be found online in many parts of the world. This is a great example of two global brands innovating and collaborating to bring customers more convenience and choice,” Mr. Fellahi said.
“In a world where cross-border buyers and sellers are often located on different continents and in completely different financial ecosystems, our platform is ideally suited to solving the complexity of collecting local currency and converting it into whatever currency merchants need on the other end.”
