Since the birth of the internet, the e-commerce space has grown significantly into a thriving industry with key players ranging from consumers, manufacturers, distributors, and more. The continuous demand and supply of goods combined with the increased number of internet users in Nigeria have enabled the industry’s continued growth.
According to Statista, a leading provider of market data, “in 2017, Nigeria had 97.2 million internet users. This implies that 43 percent of Nigeria’s population have access to the internet and is set to reach 59.92 percent in 2026.”
Due to the growing internet penetration and the resulting growth in the number of online shoppers, the e-commerce industry has since flourished with food, fashion, and beauty taking the lead.
Food and personal care products experienced the largest growth among the different categories. Compared to the previous year, online sales of food and personal items increased by roughly 60 percent. The fashion and beauty category was the second-fastest-growing online industry growing at 44 percent. This growth translated to over 1.8 billion U.S. dollars in sales.
As the e-commerce industry continues to blossom, there is an increasing need to make available online stores to cater to the demand of its ever-growing market. Shopify, a leading e-commerce giant powers over one million businesses worldwide to date. WooCommerce is at the forefront of helping business owners create online stores as well on a global scale. In Nigeria, VConnect has rolled out its VConnect for Business offering which allows local business owners an easy route to owning a digital real estate to showcase and sell their products. Packed with numerous integrations, it helps vendors to track and communicate with customers. It is now more essential than ever to ensure that transactions are carried out seamlessly and that they reach consumers at their respective locations. Therefore, the evolution of e-commerce has facilitated the booming of other industries including professional services, marketing, financial services, logistics, and several others.
Over the years, we have witnessed the rise of a myriad of financial technology companies in the Nigerian tech ecosystem. Paystack and Flutterwave are the big shots helping business owners receive payments.
Marketing technologies have arisen to devise new ways to reach customers online. Digital advertising platforms like Google and Facebook facilitate the process and provide tools for tracking user behavior. Social media giants are continuously helping business owners get the word out about their products while incorporating features like shops and payments. Thanks to online commerce, social media networks have transformed from a platform for sharing photos and videos with friends to one that promotes social commerce.
As much development has occurred in the e-commerce space, the security and authenticity of transacting online remain a huge concern. The authenticity of products purchased remains a cause of distrust for consumers shopping online. Many times, customers have experienced situations where products bought do not reflect the images online. This has sparked the social media trend “what I ordered vs what I got” where pictures of the online product listing are placed side by side with the actual item that was delivered.
Online shoppers also desire a safe and secure means of transacting online. Digital purchases often require users to enter sensitive credit card information including a pin; this poses a feeling of hesitation among users as such information can be stolen by hackers. In the early days, pay-on-delivery was the go-to payment method for skeptical customers. This was abused and at some point, Jumia took the option out of their services due to security concerns for their delivery workers. There were frequent reports of fraudulent customers making huge orders and luring delivery staff into areas where they could be robbed of the products.
There have also been cases of credit card data breaches perpetrated by hackers affecting even the largest companies with huge cybersecurity budgets. According to a report by Sophos, a UK-based cybersecurity company, “86% of Nigerian organisations surveyed said they suffered cyberattacks in the last 12 months; the second-highest after India.”
Importantly, the country ranked in the top five for major attacks including malware attacks, ransomware, stolen account credentials, and crypto-jacking. 64% of cyberattacks in Nigeria exploited misconfigurations on the organization’s server.
Nigerian organizations led the rankings in the number of data leaks suffered within the timeframe. 57% of Nigerian organizations said their public cloud data was exposed in the last year. Meanwhile, 46% of Nigerian organizations said their account credentials, the method hackers used to attack Twitter, were stolen in the last 12 months.”
While best practices like using a secure connection, conducting site audits, requiring CVV for purchases, and others are implemented on an online store, hackers always succeed in bypassing these practices.
The increased adoption of digitized transactions has given rise to various hacking activities. Hackers would stop at nothing to steal sensitive user information. This is why it’s important to strengthen the security of digital platforms and take immediate actions in the occurrence of a breach.
One of the major reasons why hackers have successfully continued to catalyze credit card data breaches is the non-disclosure of these acts by affected Nigerian organizations. Typically, cybersecurity experts disclose a data breach with the expectation that actions be taken immediately. However, this best practice has been ignored by Nigerian companies who often deny the event of a breach for fear of public persecution. E-commerce companies have found a workaround for this problem. They integrate with payment providers who have to worry about securing transactions and keeping customer data safe.
Although several payment platforms have improved in the level of security, e-commerce platforms still have some ways to go in verifying the products on their website.
If the e-commerce industry is to build on its growth and capture the trust of more online buyers, it needs to pay more attention to cybersecurity, be transparent about data breaches, and be more effective in verifying the authenticity of products listed on its platforms.
©️ Written by Abimbola Odedeyi
