Africa’s First Reality Experience Launched By Cellulant and Facebook

Pan-African Payments company, Cellulant, has built the first Augmented Reality (AR) powered try-on experiences in Facebook Messenger.

As part of the roll-out program Kenyan brand, Huddah Cosmetics has been selected as the first social commerce merchant on Mula to launch the platform; leveraging on Facebook to provide a unique product discovery shopping experience for their customers.

Cellulant has recently extended its product offerings on its Mula payment platform to include Mula Shops – a simple and convenient online shopping experience for the rising number of micro-merchants (or Hustle-preneurs) on social networking sites.

Mula Shops integrates Augmented Reality into the Facebook Messenger where customers are able to discover and try products before they purchase.

Brands that leverage social media as platforms for e-commerce can now give their customers a world-class one-stop-shop service from a trial, to payment and delivery, all within Facebook and Instagram. This is a departure from the current disjointed social commerce experience.

Cellulant’s Chief Product Officer Faizal Mirza said that the future of innovation in Africa was in providing a seamless experience in a space that is currently fragmented.

“This partnership with Facebook allows us to do so for a segment that is often neglected when considering the economies of scale in Africa. This is the beginning of our journey to offering seamless, smart and connected digital payment experience to our customers across Africa,” said Faizal Mirza.

The uniqueness of the digital experience using Augmented Reality is exciting. Trying out a product on social commerce before purchase has previously been impossible. Augmented Reality presents an opportunity for African brands and companies to build trust with consumers where “touch and feel” is often a pre-requisite before purchase.

A GeoPoll survey published in February this year found that a significant number of online shoppers utilize Facebook groups. At 32 percent, Facebook is the second leading online retailer in the main e-commerce regions. More and more, informal entrepreneurs are using this leading social media channel to sell through their groups or similar interest groups.

With mobile phones having such huge penetration on the continent, e-commerce is an opportunity for online retailers to reach the youthful African consumer population, the survey reports.

As a payment platform, the company is investing in advancing Africa’s economic footprint by building payments infrastructure that gives the customer the choice of how they manage and use their money. Ultimately, the payments infrastructure will power the success of millions of businesses by providing a simple and easy way to receive money from their customers.

Kenya is the first country to launch this new online experience with Nigeria, Tanzania, and Rwanda to follow.