According to a recent analysis by Duplo, Nigeria lags behind South Africa and Kenya in the adoption of essential business-to-business (B2B) payment procedures across Africa, such as the speed of processing invoices and payment automation.
More than 1,200 experts from Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Ghana were questioned for their thoughts, which are included in the research titled “Exploring the state of B2B Payments in Africa.”
With 49.1% of respondents preferring electronic bank transfers as their favorite method of paying vendors, South Africa leads the world. Nigeria (48.5%), Ghana (34%) and Kenya (31.9%) are next.
Kenya tops the world in payment automation, with 83.4% of Kenyans reporting that their payment system is either fully automated or semi-automated, compared to 79.9% in Nigeria, 71.69 in South Africa, and 67.23 in Ghana.
South Africa narrowly leads Nigeria in terms of how quickly invoices are processed, with 39.93% of respondents saying that this is typically the case, as opposed to Nigeria’s 39.74%.
The B2B payments market in Africa presents a huge but mostly unexploited opportunity. B2B payments’ complexity and higher transaction volumes are partially to blame for this.
The World Bank estimates that $1.5 trillion of the global B2B payment opportunity belongs to the continent.
Nevertheless, despite this encouraging potential, a lot of companies have significant payment delays and other problems with their payment procedures, which have a detrimental impact on their cash flow and limit their growth.
Many of these difficulties have been lessened recently by digital payment methods, but there are still a number of problems to be solved before it will be easier for businesses in Africa to transfer funds.
When choosing B2B payment software, for instance, security was rated as the element that respondents valued the most by 35.89% of respondents, making it the most important feature overall.
Security ranked first in each individual nation, including Kenya (39.9%), Ghana (36%) South Africa (35.6%), and Nigeria (32.2%), highlighting the value businesses have on protecting their customers’ financial information.
Functionality and usability account for 17.6% of respondents, followed by different payment alternatives at 13.5% and speed at 12.9%, indicating a desire for flexible payment methods and prompt transactions. Pricing (11.5%) and scaling (8.2%) are given less weight, indicating an emphasis on functionality and urgent demands.
Yele Oyekola, chief executive officer and co-founder of Duplo, commented on the research in a way that suggested that despite a number of obstacles, the future of B2B payments in Africa is poised for rapid development and innovation, heralding a new era of possibilities and progress for the continent’s business environment.
