Mr. Eyo Bassey Francis, CEO of Payporte has told Technology Times that cash on delivery payment option offered Nigerian online shoppers is a major impediment for e-commerce growth in the country.

The Payporte CEO told Technology Times exclusively on the sidelines of the ongoing CBN Cashless CardExpo Africa 2016 in Lagos that despite the recorded growth, the online retail payment system in Nigeria is battling with the issue of trust.

According to him, “we have found out what Nigerians pay a lot for their airline ticket online. This same Nigerians, when they come into the retail space, they want cash on delivery. It’s clearly the issue of trust.”

He explains further that “cash on delivery is a major bottleneck and it is very unsustainable because you are not guaranteed value and you can’t do business when you are not sure you are going to get value for transaction.”

The Payporte CEO says that advances in electronics and technology-based payments have accelerated and will continue to evolve but he is also quick to note that the future of online payment system in Nigeria “is not cash on delivery.”

According to Bassey, “the future of online payment in Nigeria is definitely not cash on delivery. That I am very sure about. We hope that people will also come to realise that in business, you can’t survive with cash on delivery.”

He also wants e-commerce merchants to shift payment mix or reduce payment-related cost to make the business sustainable.

The Payporte CEO pointed others challenges facing the retail payment space to include not being able to control the space, citing an example of a situation where someone makes payment and there will be a need to contact a third party to verify if the payment went through or not.

For him, fraud is another challenge which is tasking payment processors to step up their fraud detection system and be able to communicate that to e-commerce companies like Payporte.

According to the company’s CEO, Payporte is taking some steps to tackle these challenges. “The steps we are taking right now most especially regarding fraud is that we have an advanced system right now that stores suspicious transactions.”

Francis says that “we have seen that if you attempt to make payment more than three times and you fail, our system flags that up immediately and also try to make sure that we verify every other transaction through a phone call to be sure that we know the people that have placed this order and that the number that have been supplied to us haven’t reported a fraudulent number in time past.”

On effort being made in helping to build trust in the e-commerce ecosystem, Bassey say that “we are making sure that we have quality products. We are also making sure that our return policy is swift and we can return or refund people’s money on time. We have also changed our payment gateways and we have gotten better payment gateways that will be able to allow people to seamlessly make payments.”