Would eBay.com sellers start shipping directly to Nigeria?

Posted by Felix Okoli on Monday July 7, 2014 at 15:26:51:

As one of the most trusted online payment solutions called Paypal opens its doors to Nigerians, one thing I've been wanting to know if eBay sellers will now start offering direct shipping to Nigeria or at least accept Paypal payments with a Nigerian billing address.

The reason why I ask this is because most Nigerians want to shop on eBay.com and I'm not talking about those fraudulent Nigerians but I'm talking about lots of honest shoppers who have money in the bank and are willing to pay with Paypal using their cash backed debit cards.

There are many reasons why Nigerians would love to shop online at global websites such as eBay.com. There are many items in high demand in the country and Nigeria doesn't do much of production of those things but don't mind importing them into the country either for business or for personal use.

The normal process for a Nigerian to open a verified Paypal account and making payments for now requires linking their Visa or Mastercard to their Paypal accounts and these are cards that are issued from banks who know them personally. Many Nigerians had already been using their debit/credit cards online for shopping on websites like Amazon.com and Lightinthebox.com but would also want to be able to shop on sites like eBay.com which only accepts Paypal payments.

As more and more Nigerians go online in search of products they can buy and resell or use in Nigeria, the online market is growing bigger. Nigerian shoppers have joined the fray since and are adding up the number of people who globally do online shopping. Some Nigerians shop on local websites while some also shop on global websites like Amazon.com in the USA, ASOS.com in the UK and Aliexpress.com in China. Some of these international websites offer direct shipping to Nigeria while some don't and some Nigerian's don't mind paying for an extra fee for getting shipping agents to forward them to their country.

There is no local eBay website in Nigeria and I do agree that some eBay sellers have had their own bad share of Nigerian fraudsters who stole their items without paying for it. However, now that Paypal has arrived in Nigeria, I'm thinking the situation should be changing.

eBay.com may already be losing to more popular international websites like Aliexpress.com, a site that offers direct shipping to Nigeria and items are really listed at lower prices. Aliexpress.com is owned by Alibaba, a company that has recently initiated plans to launch an IPO in the US market amidst claims that it is much bigger than Amazon. Their claim may not be far from the truth given that it's chain of websites such as Aliexpress.com is already reaching and shipping to markers which most US websites ahd been ignoring for a long time even in the midst of a recession. I should think that shopping websites like eBay.com could open direct shipping services to Nigeria and also start accepting orders from Nigerians who actually use a verified Paypal account. However, one can't blame US market only focused websites like eBay.com since they believe they can be more successful by remaining local. True, eBay does have stores in certain countries around the world but perhaps the time is right to open a Nigerian branch at least for now since it's already missing out in the growing online shopping industry in Nigeria.

Now that Paypal has arrived in Nigeria legally and not through any backdoor and Nigerians are able to make payments online, the question remains as to which online shopping websites would accept Paypal payments with a Nigerian billing address. If they do accept such payments, would they at least be willing to ship to a US address if the Nigerian is visiting the USA? Will eBay only accept Paypal payments from US Paypal holders and not Nigerian holders even if the payment is a valid one?

In the midst of the growing number of online frauds and the opening of global markets to Nigerians who hold credit and debit cards, Nigerians are getting mroe concerned about their financial security and would prefer to use Paypal as their sole means of making payments rather than disclosing their card details to any shopping webiste they go to. This is one advantage which eBay offers. They accept Paypal as a means of payment and it is normally a good consolation when one knows that you don't have to expose your credit card details for every online payment you have to make.