Online shopping is rapidly growing within South Africa. Although highly convenient, when buying or selling goods, there is a disparity in the order in who acts first; does the seller wait to receive funds from the buyer before shipping the goods or does the buyer ask for their goods before making their payment? Listening to the concerns of online shoppers, E-Escrow has stepped in to put this conundrum to rest and ensure a straight forward transaction for all parties involved.
South African entrepreneur and MD of Electronic Escrow Solutions, Llewellyn Morkel developed the standalone South African software, E-Escrow.
“E-Escrow offers buyer protection and gives both the buyer and seller peace of mind when engaging in a sale, providing a positive experience for online transactions. With E-Escrow, it very easy for website owners to offer escrow based payments that includes a courier service. It’s really as simple as plug and play,” says Morkel.
E-Escrow works on two guiding principles, to be secure and simple for users. When a buyer and seller engage in a transaction on OLX, the E-Escrow third party platform will hold the buyer’s funds securely and verify the authenticity of the deposit. The seller is then offered a guarantee of payment provided that the goods or services meet the terms of the sale.
Further to buyer and seller credibility matters, online security matters. According to the study conducted by global market research company Ipsos, it was revealed that amongst the key drivers that would encourage South African online shoppers to shop online more often; safer ways to pay was a top concern (as mentioned by 75% of online shoppers surveyed).
Echoing these trepidations, the recent MasterCard Online Shopping Behaviour Survey showed that 90% of South African online shoppers cite the availability of secure payment facilities as critical when shopping online.
“South African-owned classified site OLX has entrusted E-Escrow to manage its user transactions through thitseir payment portal,” says Morkel. “This partnership aims to encourage the buying and selling of goods on the site as E-Escrow’s functionality makes it easy to shop on OLX across provincial borders. E-Escrow has bridged this gap and provided the complete solution for OLX.
“Quite simply, E-Escrow allows the seller to get paid and the buyer, to get what they paid for.”