London headquartered B2B2C payments platform, RedCloud, is pleased to announce its launch with two of the leading distributors of Coca Cola Nigeria in order to use RedCloud’s OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology in a bid to digitise the $19TN in offline payments that take place across global FMCG supply chains.
The new technology dubbed CRIBO (Cash Reconciliation and Invoicing By Optics) utilises OCR technology to digitise online and offline payment receipts, combined with RedCloud’s proprietary Artificial Intelligence engine, to provide powerful insights to all supply chains participants that transact with each other – insights that can help towards creating operating efficiencies, reduce costs and improve sales across global supply chains, particularly in emerging markets where B2B payments are commonly made offline, through non-digital means.
Kikelomo Alonge, owner of Kelom Global Concept, a one of the Nigerian Coca Cola Distribution companies part of the RedCloud Pilot, commented that “offline payments by my salesmen have been troublesome due to late or incomplete remittances, so, the fact that RedCloud can digitize my payments brings security to my business and improves working capital as I no longer have to wait for the salesman to remit the funds manually. It is an important digital transformation for Nigerian small businesses and I am excited to be part of it!”
The launch enables distributors in Coca Cola’s 1300 strong distributor network to pay and get paid online using the RedCloud platform, to reduce the high cost and difficulty of moving non-digital payments to suppliers, reconciling invoices instantly against key financial and product data, and accessing critical data insights to ensure faster promotional and credit capacity.
RedCloud’s goal is to build a new kind of financial services network, which is cardless, borderless, and, through its pioneering CRIBO™ engine, uses powerful transaction data generated by Manufacturers, financial service providers, Distributors, Merchants and Consumers to deliver a smarter financial experience.
Coca Cola is represented in Nigeria by the Nigerian Bottling Company, which is one of the world’s largest bottlers of drinks from The Coca‑Cola Company. With a revenue of over $6bn, Nigeria Bottling Company distributes 136 Coca-Cola brands including Coke, Sprite and Fanta to 595m consumers in the 28 countries they operate across Europe, Middle East and Africa. In Nigeria alone, the Nigerian Bottling company serves 180 million people through 1 million merchants supported by 1300 distributors.
Commenting on RedCloud’s launch announcement, RedCloud Chief Product Officer Soumaya Hamzaoui commented “We’re very excited to partner with the distributors of Coca Cola across Nigeria. For too long there has been an entrenched high cost and risk of managing offline payments across B2B supply chains. The focus on consumer fintech based applications does not address the enormous technology challenges needed to be overcome for the successful digitisation of B2B payments We already have strong relationships with a number of global consumer goods companies and our recent announcement with Coca Cola and their distributors in Nigeria, where over 95% of consumer payments at point of sale are made in cash, goes further to demonstrate our drive to bring offline financial services, online through our technology, to the notoriously underserved SME segment.”