Kenya's Saving Platform, Koa Partners With Jumia
The alliance of two parties often results in something big, dramatic, and impactful. At least, this has always been the case in most movies, when superheroes come together to save the day or when two nations join forces to invade an opposing country.
The idea behind acts like partnerships, collaborations, and alliances is to build a more robust force or create something unique. The tech and entrepreneurial industry often witness partnerships; most times, startups come together to satisfy their customers and make an easy way to transact or a safer platform for the users. This thought came to mind when the news of Koa and Jumia’s partnership broke out.
In as much as this sounded like great news, the confusion comes when you have Koa, a money-saving platform, a place where those trying to be diligent with their finances go to save up, and Jumia, an e-commerce platform, a platform to shop quickly and have it delivered to the doorstep, in summary, a place to spend, comes into partnership. Yet this time, both organizations come together for the greater good.
The questions were, is this partnership not a clash of agendas? How would they intend to serve their customers, and what is the goal of this partnership?
Providing more insight, Patrick Russell, Koa’s Head of Partnership, gave some detail about this recent collaboration.
Koa x Jumia
In Patrick’s response, Koa x Jumia is built to provide more individuals in Kenya with an affordable, transparent, and accessible savings platform.
“Koa has partnered with Jumia to provide their employees with an option to save and invest with Koa, directly from their salary, the partnership is with Jumia employees rather than customers. Koa is built to provide a simple and transparent savings solution for everyone, in this partnership we are offering Jumia employees the option to do this directly. In this partnership, Jumia employees are becoming Koa customers, and the experience for current Koa customers will not change.”Patrick said.
What is Koa
Koa is the only digital savings companion for Kenyan Millennials. It makes it easy to start saving instantly and stick with it through personalized, goal-based targets that put users on a clear and visible path toward financial freedom.
Founded in April 2021, The startup has received thousands of users on its platform, helping Kenyans save better and build sound financial growth.
Through this partnership with Jumia, Koa guarantees the e-commerce employees a transparent, simple, and affordable saving solution. The organization also envisions a time when Kenyans can save with Koa directly from their salary to remove the temptation of spending money once it lands in their account and build a culture of ‘saving first.’
It is in Koa’s opinion that this partnership will have an impact on Kenya’s fintech ecosystem. “with the power of this partnership we have the ability to build awareness around digital savings and investment. Over 60% of Kenyans save through informal savings habits that can be inconsistent, expensive, and stressful and so what we are trying to do is make the environment much more accessible and friendly for all users, hopefully, this partnership opens some more eyes to that.” Stated Partick Rusell.
This partnership is not Koa’s first partnership with another startup, and the organization has recently partnered with the likes of Flutterwave and Smile identity.
There is optimism that Koa will partner with other brands, enabling the fintech to access other markets in the ecosystem.