Corporate Payments: Edenred Strengthens its Presence in Africa with Jumia Travel
FACTS
- The French prepaid specialist Edenred teams up with the leading African online hotel booking portal, Jumia Travel.
- Goals: facilitating and securing payments for their partner hotels in Africa.
- Through this partnership, Jumia Travel will be including Edenred’s one-time use virtual cards as a payment method. The point for them is to feature a digital, secure and instant payment method for their partners.
- How it works: Every time a user books a hotel, Jumia Travel can pay the corresponding hotel with a single-use card number specifically issued by Edenred. The transaction can then be confirmed instantly.
- Edenred builds on their payment platform’s capabilities as well as on CSI’s interface: a Californian FinTech focusing on corporate payments.
CHALLENGES
- African expansion. Through this partnership, the French group speeds up their development on the expanding African travel and hospitality industry, the revenue of which is expected to grow annually by 7% until 2022.
- Upholding their leadership in Africa. Jumia Travel is active in more than 40 African countries, with over 100 partner airlines and 25,000 hotels. They focus on maintaining this leadership.
- Optimising payment processes. The payment methods featured until recently –including bank transfers– were not perfectly relevant for optimising settlements. Edenred’s multi-currency, instant payment solution would enable Jumia to streamline relations with their network of partners.
MARKET PERSPECTIVE
- This partnership is in line with Edenred’s Fast Forward strategic plan meant, for instance, to craft innovative BtoB payment services, in addition to their Fleet & Mobility Solutions, Employee benefits, as well as Incentive and rewards offers.
- Edenred recently acquired the American FinTech CSI and soon made room for their skills in their developments to enter the promising corporate payment market.
- Jumia stands out as an “Alibaba-like” company, as they keep entering more partnerships with large-scale groups. In November 2018, this African e-commerce platform announced a distribution partnership with the French retailer Carrefour.