Online retail giant Amazon has launched its Amazon PayCode payment option for Kenyan consumers. The new initiative allows Kenyan shoppers to buy goods on Amazon’s e-commerce platform and pay in cash via Western union money transfer agents in Kenya.

Amazon’s new PayCode service has also been rolled out in Chile, Colombia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Peru, the Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand. It allows Amazon customers to select the PayCode option at checkout and then complete the transaction using cash via a Western Union agent.

The move is likely to have limited short term impact on online retail in Kenya, which is extremely limited anyway and still mostly click and collect via existing bricks and mortar retailers. However, the growth and proliferation of payment options to allow consumers to pay for items via e-commerce platforms using cash, rather than cash on delivery, represents a critical step forward for the viable development of e-commerce in developing sub Saharan African markets.

This is a topic Trendtype has covered before, noting that the leading e-commerce player in Africa, Jumia, is still burning cash in most of its African markets because of the low volumes of business and high costs related to distribution and transaction processing. By the same token, Casino/Bolloré’s CDiscount online business and CFAO’s Afrishop platform have both exited their African markets.