THE COMPANY
We are the leading pan-African e-commerce platform. Our platform consists of our marketplace, which connects sellers with consumers, our logistics service, which enables the shipment and delivery of packages from sellers to consumers, and our payment service, which facilitates transactions among participants active on our platform in selected markets.
We are active in three regions in Africa, which consist of 11 countries that together accounted for approximately 70% of Africa’s GDP of €2.2 trillion in 2019, according to estimates by the International Monetary Fund. Though still nascent, we believe that e-commerce in Africa is well positioned to grow.
On our marketplace, a large and diverse group of sellers offer goods in a wide range of categories, such as fashion and apparel, smartphones, home and living, consumer packaged goods, beauty and perfumes and other electronics. We also provide consumers a restaurant food delivery service, and payment services such as airtime recharge. On our platform, we had 6.1 million Annual Active Consumers as of December 31, 2019. We believe that the number and quality of sellers on our marketplace, and the breadth of their respective offerings, attract more consumers to our platform, increasing traffic and orders, which in turn attracts even more sellers to Jumia, creating powerful network effects. Our marketplace operates with limited inventory risk, as the goods sold by sellers via our marketplace are predominantly sold by third-party sellers, meaning the cost of inventory remains with the seller. In 2019, the vast majority of the items sold on our marketplace was offered by third-party sellers. To a limited extend, we sell items directly in order to enhance consumer experience in key categories and regions.
Our logistics service, Jumia Logistics, facilitates the delivery of goods in a convenient and reliable way. It consists of a large network of leased warehouses, pick up stations for consumers and drop-off locations for sellers and a significant number of local third-party logistics service providers, whom we integrate and manage through our proprietary technology, data and processes. In certain cities, where we believe it is beneficial to enhance our logistics service, we also operate our own last-mile fleet.
Traditionally, consumers across Africa rely on cash to transact. We have designed our payment service, JumiaPay, to facilitate online transactions between participants on our platform, with the intention of integrating additional financial services in the future. As of December 31, 2019, JumiaPay was available in six markets: Nigeria, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Morocco and Kenya. JumiaPay Transactions and TPV have both increased substantially since its launch. The number of JumiaPay Transactions reached 7.6 million in 2019, more than tripling compared to 2018. TPV reached €124.3 million in 2019, up 127% compared to 2018. Our payment service app, Jumia One, also allows consumers to complete online payments for a broad range of every-day services offered by third-party providers, such as airtime recharge or utility payments, as well as financial services such as micro-loans or savings products. Through Jumia Lending, our sellers can access financing solutions provided by third-party financial institutions, leveraging data from the sellers transactional activity on our platform for credit scoring purposes. We intend to continue expanding the range of payment and financial services offered to both consumers and sellers as part of the Jumia ecosystem, with a view to offering those services beyond our platform in the future.
Our operations benefit from centralized decision-making and a uniform technology platform coupled with coordinated local presence. Our unified, scalable technology platform has been developed by our technology and data team, which is predominantly located in Portugal. This technology platform covers all relevant a spects of our operations, from data management, business intelligence, traffic optimization and consumer engagement to infrastructure, logistics and payments. We constantly collect and analyze data to help us optimize our operations, make our consumer experience more personal and relevant, and enable us, selected sellers and logistics partners to make informed real-time decisions. Our local teams in each of our countries of operations have access to, and may benefit from, the centralized data collection and analytics and are empowered to use the insights gained from our platform in order to take action locally.
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