Despite legal barriers .. Significant indicators of e-commerce in Tunisia

Majdi Al-Saidi-Tunisia

When Iraad Bouazizi was looking at his mobile screen on the pages of communication, his eyes fell on an advertisement offering to sell neck belts through a portal. He did not hesitate to open the advertising window and book the product that he had long searched for in pharmacies and was not found.

The 35-year-old employee knew nothing about e-commerce and remote sales and purchases, but was impressed by the experience, not only because he had long sought a solution to soothe his pain, but also because he believed that getting his goods would be as easy and fast as required.

Bouazizi describes his first experiences in tele-commerce as unsuccessful, and seems to have fallen victim to a site offering certain products and offering other goods different from those paid for before the box was opened.

"E-commerce is really tempting," he tells Al Jazeera Net. "It suffices the hardships of mobility, the overcrowding of shops and the carrying of goods, but the confidence in receiving a product with quality specifications is the missing link in that process. ".

Evolution despite difficulties
Despite obstacles, mainly due to weak client confidence and fear of being victims of fraud by middlemen, Tunisia's e-commerce has registered a remarkable development in recent years. The United Nations Trade and Development Report this year ranked Tunisia fourth in the African continent in e-commerce. Behind the Mauritius, Nigeria and South Africa.

The report was based on the percentage of Internet users, the safety of electronic systems, the quality of the postal network and the total value of electronic payment transactions that exceeded 224 million dinars (about eighty million dollars).

Despite these indicators, Tawfiq Al-Furati, Director of Payment Systems at Al-Aman Bank, believes that the reality of the sector needs more than ever before a radical review in the means and mechanisms to increase the number of users of the electronic payment system.

According to Al-Jazeera Net, Al-Furati said that the impression prevails among the customer is that the e-commerce system suffers from several problems, which reduces the degree of confidence in the system.

There is a lot of work awaiting the banking sector and sites active in the field of remote trade, especially as the completed electronic transactions do not exceed 5% of the total sales, while 95% of them are in cash, according to the same spokesman.

He adds that their institution was the first banking company initiated the establishment of a system to extract bills of services through the bank card or conduct some financial operations through an application in smart phones.

Tunisia, he says, is on the path to universalization of remote banking services and is working on new laws to stimulate companies and customers to e-commerce by reducing fees for payment of bank cards.

Teaching E-Commerce
Some private education and training institutions are seeking to support the sector through the development of pedagogical and educational mechanisms and the formation of specialists in e-commerce, according to Al-Jazeera Net Adam Al-Mubaraki, director of the Afro-Tunisian private training institute.

According to Mbarki, a marketing professor, Tunisia has a network infrastructure that is comparable to that found in European countries, which means that the ground for the success of the e-commerce experience is ready. Scientific in the field of electronic sales.

He adds that e-commerce is confined to booking products through websites and then paying money in cash, an incomplete process.

One of the possible solutions for the development of the sector is to move towards training students in this specialization, which is being sought for approval recently, according to the same spokesman.

Students at the Afro-Tunisian Training Institute receive lessons in e-payment techniques, web design and engineering, business management and marketing, as well as e-commerce law, the spokesman said.

According to the figures of the Ministry of Commerce in Tunisia, the number of e-commerce or services related to payment via bank cards has evolved to 1,657 in 2018, up from 1,200 in 2012.

The number of e-commerce operations exceeded four million last year, while in 2015 it was only 1.5 million.

The popularity of e-commerce has increased in recent years as a result of banks' adoption of new payment, remittance and extraction services.