Aharon Bernal, 28, co-founder of Safex.Market, Dubai's first digital marketplace that trades in physical goods for cryptocurrency, is bringing a long-needed change to global e-commerce. The mover and shaker is dealing a powerful blow to e-commerce giants such as Amazon, eBay, Shopify and others, that treat small- and medium-sized sellers with a bias.
The internet was supposed to bring sellers and buyers closer and eliminate go-betweens. For the most part, however, a new breed of intermediaries was born — large platforms. There is no denying that e-commerce giants do a great job facilitating the sale of goods and services for independent merchants. However, they also entrap small businesses by owning the customer, taking a large cut of the sales price, and allowing competitors to advertise at seller’s cost, unless the seller pays an added advertising fee.
Being an industry veteran with eight years of first hand experience selling various wares on Amazon, Bernal has witnessed and experienced all that injustice towards small merchants like him. In a nutshell, the inequality, according to Bernal, manifests in a more favourable treatment of buyers to the detriment of sellers that Amazon practices trying to please the buyers at any cost. Two out of three small business owners view larger corporations like Amazon as limiting their growth potential.
With the launch of the Safex.Market marketplace, Bernal is giving buyers the opportunity to support and engage with a small business, creating a healthier transaction that facilitates trust and relationship between buyers and sellers as well as independence for sellers. Thanks to the industry’s lowest participation and transaction fees, the new platform also offers an unlimited growth potential for participating businesses.
Safex.Market’s uniqueness and the main ace up Bernal’s sleeve is that the innovative platform is built upon Safex blockchain and uses its proprietary crypto currency SafeXcash ($SFX) for all payments. The crypto allows participants to make and receive instant payments thus ruling out any delays that many e-merchants name as a major problem.
Instead of just keeping the lights on, Safex.Market gives small businesses a chance to grow exponentially and broaden their product lists at a fraction of large marketplaces' cost. Bernal expects that the amount of goods available for sale through his platform will hit $100 million by the end of 2022 and englobe 100 countries.
Whether you are a first-time online seller or an experienced merchant tired of Amazon’s or other large platform’s—binding terms and complexity, Safex.Market is worth a try as it was built with small-size sellers’ interests in mind. With the lowest entry and product listing fees, the platform is on the way to becoming a real-life alternative to existing e-commerce monopolies.