South African e-commerce price comparison website, PriceCheck, is gearing up to launch an offering for the Nigerian market this month.

PriceCheck, which was founded in 2006 and backed by a division of the Naspers Group MIH Internet Africa, claims to be SA’s leading price comparison website.

The unit’s general manager, Andre De Wet, says the website has 30 million products in its catalogue, over 6,000 categories and 400 retail shops that have signed up with the service.

He has also told Nigerian technology blog TechLoy that the website is “probably by a factor of five or six the biggest price comparison site in South Africa and probably in Africa.”

And the business is planning to break into the Nigerian market either by this Friday or the middle of next week, De Wet told TechLoy in a video interview.

A landing page for the offering is already online at http://www.pricecheck.com.ng.

“It’s a very soft launch,” said De Wet.

PriceCheck has signed up the likes of online Nigerian retail store Konga.com and two to three international players that the firm also uses in SA.

Nigeria’s e-commerce market, though, is radically different to South Africa’s, as the West African nation is more accustomed to buying imported products in foreign currencies, said De Wet.

“I know the Nigerian market is more used to buying (in) or paying a dollar fee and importing things than the South African mindset,” he explained.

“We’ll probably start playing a little bit more into international suppliers in Nigeria as well,” he added.

Nigeria's e-commerce market has experienced strong growth.

Euromonitor international, a global market research organisation, has said that "the rapid growth in Nigeria's technological base has opened the nation's market to home-grown online retail markets, with an estimated 25% growth in online shopping with revenues valued at N62.4 million in 2011, a N12.5 billion increase from 2010."