Instagram is a photo sharing platform that has a perfect slot in all Smartphone stores as one of the most downloaded apps. Even before the Facebook cryptocurrency expectations sink deep into our veins, a new check out feature is coming to Instagram soon as a spike to online shopping with a close touch to social media users.
The new Instagram Checkout feature works in a way that a dominative website like Jumia doesn’t have to redirect users to its website, but instead offer a direct Instagram buy button to receive an order and ship it to a customer’s Insta address. With more than 1 billion active users, Instagram is simply making it possible for Shopping sites to receive and fulfill orders without leaving Instagram.
Instagram’s new check-out feature means online shopping is slowly diverting from the old fashion to a new social media ignited trend where every user can either become a seller or a buyer. For instance, OLX is one mighty buyer to buyer platform that has made online shopping a perfect corner in Africa. And So, Instagram’s Checkout option is just a revamp of this model since there will be no touch restrictions on who can become a seller.
How Instagram’s Checkout option works
Contrary to the old design, each time a user clicks/taps on a product tag/AD, for example, a Galaxy S10 off Jumia’s mobile week post. Instagram displays a” Check out ” button instead of the old fashion ” View on website” option that usually exists on product posts.
As a matter of fact, when you choose Check out, Instagram uses your default payment methods to pay the seller and the product is delivered to your address. Among the accepted forms of payment, Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and Paypal lead the in-development Instagram cart route with a trustworthy touch to the user’s wallet.
Unlike the usual online shopping procedure where a merchant relies on your profile data to serve you with more suggestions and probably a pingback to buy more products. Instagram will be hiding all sorts of private information of the buyer with only a delivery address and payment sent to the seller/merchant.
However, we’re not sure whether mobile money payments will be available on Instagram’s shopping ladder or card payments and PayPal will be the only methods available. But still, a payment method like Airtel Pay or Momo Pay would make things easy for every user to conveniently ride on social media amidst the OTT tax thorns.
Henceforth, Instagram just made it easy for online hustlers to rip big from items being promoted on the platform by receiving cash directly from a user without necessarily having a shopping website.
So, don’t be surprised if your friend embarks on selling products on Instagram and only pay a small service fee to deliver your item with ease. More so, We’re not sure whether this feature will cross to Africa any time soon, but as soon as it does, online shopping will be on another level than ever before.