The Managing Director of Nigeria’s premier online marketplace, Kaymu.com, Evangline Wile has said that the current depreciation of the Nation’s currency, the Naira has not had any significant impact on e-commerce.

She stated this while speaking to Vanguard on the sideline of a media brunch organised by the Marketplace to mark its second anniversary in Lagos.

She said although an impact may be expected; it will not be significant as operators in the sector especially merchants on Kaymu marketplace had anticipated the trend and made contingency plans.

“Certainly there should be an impact but we don’t expect it to be over a long period, for example over a year. Right now, this situation has not had any impact on our merchants because lots of our merchants had anticipated what is happening and planned for it and also because we are just coming from the Christmas period when importers over-exported and there is still a reasonable stock that will last until the situation stabilises,” she said.

“I think our merchants see it as short term issue. I think our expectation is that after the elections that it will go back up. And even other major currencies will stabilise. I think most of our merchants had anticipated that this will happen for this short period of time and so they have made contingency plans. So I don’t expect the continuous decline in the naira’s value to have any significant impact in the long term. I think it will be short term thing and probably be over in the next quarter,” she added.

She however noted: “Even if after the elections and the Naira continues to fall, I still think that it will not have significant negative impact on e-commerce because Nigeria is not the only country in the world where there are currency fluctuations. There are lots of ways to deal with it and a lot of merchants are savvy enough to be able to deal with it.”

On what Kaymu has accomplished in the past two years, she said they have been able to attract over ten thousand merchants to the Kaymu marketplace even as it has expanded to six other cities in Nigeria and 34 other countries all over the world.

She said Kaymu will continue to expand through strategic marketing to achieve its vision which is to bring all Nigerian merchants online.

Also speaking, Kaymu’s Head of Marketing Communications, Tomiwa Oladele told journalists that the online marketplace has continued to provide premium exposure for merchants who sell on Kaymu website through promotion on different platforms including Google, Facebook, and offline including customer services and logistics support at no cost.

She noted that Kaymu is concentrating on expanding its merchant base and therefore offers free services to all merchants who enlist and sell on the Kaymu platform.