TraDap Launches in Nigeria With $2.5m Investment, Partners EscrowLock for Buyer-Seller Protection, Ingegrates VeriStation for Product Verification

TraDap, an international e-Commerce firm operating in the United Kingdom, the United States and other developed economies, officially launched operations in Nigeria last Friday at an event held in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, unveiling a partnership with EscrowLock, Nigeria’s official buyer and seller protection escrow service. Vowing to fight e-Commerce scams, the company revealed that the launch, which followed an investment of 2.5 million United States dollars, would create thousands of jobs for Nigerians and open new part-time, work-from-home, income-earning opportunities for young people who can use their mobile phones to work remotely from home.

In the event, which was attended by stakeholders drawn across various sectors, including the eCommerce space in Nigeria, TraDap Nigeria‘s Managing Director, Mr. Richard Bennett, extolled the potential of Nigeria as an important economy in Africa, explaining that this informed their choice of Nigeria as their next location in their expansion bid.

Mr. Bennett and other representatives of TraDap used the occasion to offer explanations regarding some objectives of TraDap’s entry into Nigeria.

He spoke on the desire of the company to create jobs and income-earning potential through the TraDap Nigeria platform for thousands of Nigerian youths, whom he described as brilliant and hardworking but often lacking the opportunities to showcase themselves in contrast to their counterparts in Western countries.

 

Part-time, Work-From-Home, Income-Earning Opportunities

Aside from creating regular job vacancies and positions that will be filled by Nigerians, Mr. Bennett pointed out that the eCommerce company will create partnership opportunities that will enable Nigerian youths to advertise products sold by various vendors on the platform and earn commission on each successful sale.

He noted that this was one of the core platform policies vendors are expected to uphold. Instead of spending their entire advertising budget on social media ads and other advertising means, vendors allow Nigerian youths to engage in the advertising and earn a commission that would otherwise have gone to social media companies, without any guarantee of sales.

In his own words: “One of our major objectives here in Nigeria is to help the economy grow by providing as much income-earning opportunity as possible for the youths. We know that there’s very high unemployment, so we feel the moral responsibility to help in our own little way to tackle that, rather than just focusing on making money and going away.

“You could see vendors on our platform spending millions of Naira every day on running ads on Meta and other social media channels, which does not guarantee sales all the time. Why not share a bit of that with the youths and help improve the economy? Engage the youths to help you publicize your products, whether offline or online; they could use their phones and handle that part-time, from their homes. And when they bring in a sale, you pay them the money you would have paid the social media companies for adverts. This is even a no-risk strategy and presents a win-win situation for both the vendors and the Nigerians.”

Nigerians who are willing to participate can click here to apply for the part-time, work-from-home opportunities which is open to everyone including students, unemployed youths, men and women and teenagers.

 

Buyer Protection on TraDap Nigeria’s Website Using EscrowLock

Another representative of TraDap, Margaret Whitmore, spoke to Authentic Reports on TraDap’s objective of providing a safe eCommerce space to ensure security of transactions and protect both buyers and sellers from fraud and online scams.

This, she revealed, would be made possible by the platform’s partnership with EscrowLock, a platform widely recognized as the best escrow service provider in Nigeria and Africa.

“We have secured a partnership with EscrowLock, which we found out is the trusted and widely accepted escrow payment provider in Nigeria and beyond, to enable us to leverage their deep expertise to protect both buyers and sellers on our Nigeria platform from scams and fraudulent practices. This will see buyers on our platform paying directly into EscrowLock’s bank account for some transactions, where their payment will be held until the vendor delivers the product as agreed.”

 

Seller Protection on TraDap: No Pay on Delivery

When asked whether sellers on TraDap will offer pay-on-delivery, Ms. Whitmore stated that TraDap will neither entertain the pay-on-delivery model on its platform nor ask its sellers to do so.

She explained: “TraDap Nigeria’s platform cares about the buyers and the sellers as well. We want to protect the sellers just as much as we want to protect the buyers. There are many instances where someone might just be scrolling on social media, see a product that catches their eye and go ahead to place an order even though they do not really have the money to pay for it, just because it is pay-on-delivery. When the seller takes the pain to deliver the product to the buyer’s destination, the buyer becomes unresponsive and stops picking the calls of the delivery men, leading to a return of the item and the seller bearing the cost of shipping and delivery.

“Going with the pay-on-delivery model will expose sellers to this type of loss and will also make it more difficult for us to regulate the platform properly. So, there’ll be no pay-on-delivery on TraDap. Any buyer who’s serious will need to make a payment, but that payment will not be released to the seller until the buyer receives the product. This protects everyone,” Ms. Whitmore noted.

A third objective identified by Mr. Thomas Harrison, another representative of TraDap who was visiting from the US for the launch, was the fight against counterfeit products.

Mr. Harrison explained that the platform will have zero tolerance for counterfeit products, noting that sellers who sell counterfeits could face a permanent ban from the TraDap Nigeria platform.

“If you want to sell Nike shoes, ensure they are truly Nike and not counterfeits bearing the Nike logo. Sellers must do due diligence to ensure they don’t sell patented or copyrighted materials, and they must explicitly declare the quality of every item they list on the platform to avoid issues that stem from false advertising,” he said.

He noted that TraDap Nigeria site will be integrated with VeriStation so that buyers who purchase such branded goods on the platform will be able to visit VeriStation to verify whether the genuineness and authenticity of such goods so as to avoid buying counterfeit or fake goods.

VeriStation, a global initiative to counter fake and counterfeit products, is widely regarded as the best website for verification of the genuineness, originality or authenticity of certain branded goods.

 

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