I was looking at the Amazon site for some business inspiration:
Here are a few facts for your consideration:
They are into the web retail service sector.
They warehouse a wide variety of goods from diverse places and categories.
They do not currently cater to the Nigeria market due to fears of payment fraud and Nigeria's reputation with card and web related payments.
Alot of Nigerian banks currently issue VISA cards which can be used for direct online payments but these cards are not accepted by many web merchants (Amazon for one) due to the potential for charge-backs or fraud.
My Idea is relatively simple:
Amazon currently has among its services:
The Bulk purchase of gift coupons.
These can be customized and sold with or without the Amazon brand.
A Minimum order is for 5000 dollars worth of coupons.
These bulk coupons can be obtained via the following ways:
- directly as access codes (via CD or download) or
- via web service that provides coupon directly (programming expertise required)
I believe that if Amazon is approached directly and a direct business relationship is established - we can obtain the bulk gift coupon and act as their sole representative in Nigeria - we can then bypass their restriction of the payment via debit or credit cards from Nigeria as the payment would already have been made for the coupons by our proposed establishment.
Therefore:
Individuals or organizations can then use our services directly and thus facilitate their customers to shop directly on Amazon but this time making payment via the gift coupons, which will in turn be purchased directly from us or our proposed business establishment.
There is no risk to Amazon and we assume direct risk as the purchases of such coupons will be done directly through our site - or better yet, a gateway payment service can be built that will facilitate payment by debit card and then purchase the gift coupons by the card holder which will then be used to complete a payment to amazon.
We may then again chose to only sell to wholesalers or big organisations directly.
There is no risk to Amazon and we assume direct risk as the purchases of such coupons will be done directly through our site - or better yet, a gateway payment service can be built that will facilitate payment by debit card and then purchase the gift coupons by the card holder which will then be used to complete a payment to amazon.
We may then again chose to only sell to wholesalers or big organisations directly.
This model can of course be modified to cater to more business opportunities.
If we obtain the franchise for Nigeria - we can in essence corner a very lucrative market.
Banks intend to start customer loyalty programs (using debit or credit cards) to encourage card usage or bank patronage.
This gift coupon can be tiered and applied to each bank individually - we can thus handle fulfillment and other services that are direct tied in. It can also be sold as a service concept to banks and we can thus setup the required infrastructure.
What do you think?
Can we talk about this -is there any potential pitfall that has NOT been explored?
Please indicate where necessary.
Please indicate where necessary.
i like the idea and it works. u seem to have thot it over and true however there is just one minor glitch.
ReplyDeleteamazon and Ebay have in there criteria for business not to deal with or to nigeria.
only if tht is changed can we do business.
I know that glitch - that's why the entire idea above makes sense. It guarantees AMAZON that the prize coupons WILL be paid for upfront by out business entity and we assume the risk of collecting OUR payment from the customer directly. We can further sweeten the pot by using the business as the receiving address for the goods purchased with the prize coupons.
ReplyDeleteAlso as there is no credit or debit card processing issue (which is where most web merchants: AMAZON have issues with Nigeria due to the fraud cases) - the payments have been made upfront and thus the potential risk to Amazon is eliminated.