Senegalese startup Comparez is making it possible for users in nine African countries to order goods from e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Jumia and pay for them using mobile money.
Founded in 2017, Comparez works as a search engine for online commerce, grouping all sites within a country and helping users compare products to find the best price.
Recently, however, it expanded its scope to offer users the possibility of buying goods of various e-commerce platforms using mobile money. A number of partnerships are already in place, and more planned over the course of this year.
Founded by former Jumia employees, Comparez is already active in Senegal, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Morocco, Tunisia, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa. According to founder Abdou Dieng, the goal is to allow even unbanked users to access e-commerce platforms.
“We give the opportunity for the unbanked to buy an Amazon product using mobile money from our platform, and have it delivered in six days,” he told Disrupt Africa, saying the platform’s usage of USSD opened it up still further.
“We wanted to free ourselves from the traditional business models of comparison platforms and propose a new approach, Mobile money is an opportunity to democratise online shopping on international platforms.”
Comparez secured seed funding from the Senegalese government’s Délégation de l’Entrepreneuriat Rapide (DER) late last year, but is now seeking further investment to expand its operations. Dieng is happy with uptake thus far, and believes everyone sees the benefit.
“Once you are on the platform and you realise that all your sites are grouped together you will come back,” he said.
“We are in a depressed buying environment and consumers are looking for the best price.
The rate of return visitors exceeds our projections. We have proven our scalability.”
