Unilever and Absa Bank partner to offer trade credit in Kenya - Trendtype Africa and Middle East
Absa Bank and Unilever have signed a KSh4bn ($30. 9m) financing agreement to provide trade credit to distributors and retailers in Kenya. The programme is designed to improve access to working capital, and will include more than 38 Unilever distributors nationwide, as well as retailers they service.
Absa Bank and Unilever have signed a KSh4bn ($30. 9m) financing agreement to provide trade credit to distributors and retailers in Kenya. The programme is designed to improve access to working capital, and will include more than 38 Unilever distributors nationwide, as well as retailers they service. Absa and Unilever will onboard more than 10 distributors before the end of 2026. Absa will offer financing through its Wezesha Stock loan service, which should provide fast, flexible working capital. Wezesha Stock is a digital financing platform. Under the programme, businesses can access unsecured loans of up to KSh10m ($77,400), including LPO financing, invoice discounting and asset finance options. Of this, half can be disbursed within 48 hours to a digital account. Trade credit is a huge growth vector for the traditional trade: a number of B2B buying platforms, including Twiga Foods (Kenya), TradeDepot (Nigeria) and Chari (Morocco), offer buy now pay later (BNPL) as a means to improve trader turnover. In 2020, Nestlé, fintech platform Nomanini, and Standard Bank partnered to provide working capital and trade credit to unbanked or underbanked informal businesses in Zambia. This allowed small retailers to stock Nestlé products via inventory loans. Unilever actually works with platforms like TradeDepot and Boost in Nigeria to offer inventory financing. Kenya is Unilever’s primary testing ground for informal retailer financing in Africa. In 2018, Mastercard and Unilever announced that they would expand their partnership to help small retailers in Africa access finance. The “Jaza Duka” programme (Jaza Duka is Swahili for “fill up your store”), launched in partnership with Mastercard and KCB Bank, used Unilever’s inventory data to assess the creditworthiness of small kiosk owners. KCB Bank then provided interest-free micro-credit lines for up to 17 days via a secure mobile wallet. Through its subsidiary Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), Unilever offers integrated instant, paperless working capital loan facilities directly via its Shikhar app. There are similar Unilever programmes in the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and Pakistan.