FedEx dropped as much as 7.4% during trading, its steepest fall in over a year, while UPS followed, sliding up to 8.9%. 

Forward Air and GXO Logistics both recorded double-digit declines, while Old Dominion Freight Line fell more than 5%.

The reaction came within hours after Amazon announced that it would open its logistics network to businesses beyond its marketplace.

With such a wide scope, the company plans to offer freight, warehousing, fulfilment and parcel delivery as a single service to external clients.

Amazon has spent years building warehouses, delivery stations and air capacity to speed up its own orders. Now, it wants to use spare capacity to move goods for other companies, even when those goods have nothing to do with its retail platform.

In practical terms, this puts Amazon in direct competition with long-established carriers. It also stretches into areas handled by freight brokers, warehouse operators and trucking firms. 

The market reaction shows how seriously investors are taking that risk.

Amazon said customers could range from industrial groups like 3M to retailers such as Lands’ End, showing it is not targeting a niche. Rather, it is going after the expansive logistics market.

Morgan Stanley analyst Ravi Shanker wrote, “The announcement could be a watershed moment for North American freight transportation companies.”

Others see a longer build-up behind this move. Nate Skiver, founder of LPF Spend Management, said, “Amazon has been heading in this direction for several years, offering portions of its supply chain capabilities as services to non-Amazon sellers.” 

He added, “Bringing its end-to-end capabilities to market in a unified service offering stands to disrupt the US logistics market.”

The issue is not just about parcel delivery, as air freight firms, trucking companies and even rail and ocean shipping operators could feel the pressure if Amazon scales quickly. 

Its advantage lies in adequate management, as it owns large parts of the network, from storage to last-mile delivery.

Competitors are facing a company with deep pockets, existing infrastructure and a track record of cutting delivery times. Investors responded fast, and the sell-off reveals that.

However, Amazon still needs to prove it can run this as a standalone service at scale.

With e-commerce growing by over 15% to 20% in Nigeria annually and over 60% of businesses rely on third-party logistics to move goods, we can now call delivery services the backbone of the country’s informal and formal economy. 

Nigeria’s courier, express, and parcel (CEP) market was valued at over $129.8 million in 2025, and projections suggest it will hit $186.8 million by 2030.

Sometimes, moving a package from Ikeja to Ikoyi or even the UK or Canada is sometimes more complicated than applying for a visa, and logistics giants like DHL and FedEx, are working to ensure seamless delivery locally and internationally. 

It’s no longer just about express international shipping; the demand now includes fast, affordable, and reliable local delivery, as well as seamless international exports for Nigerian businesses and individuals.

With cross-border e-commerce growing and SMEs shipping products abroad, Nigerians now ask: Who does it better locally and globally?

Snapshot: The Two Global Giants

Local Logistics: Presence vs Precision

DHL has spent years embedding itself in Nigeria’s urban logistics space. You’ll find DHL offices and drop-off points not just in Lagos and Abuja, but in cities like Ibadan, Kano, Enugu, and even satellite towns. Their use of motorbikes, vans, and location hubs makes them visibly active in last-mile fulfilment.

FedEx, operating via Red Star Express, is more visible in corporate corridors, business districts, airports, and office parks. Their operations feel optimised for structured deliveries, not Nigeria’s unstructured situations where a rider may need to call ten times to find your house.

Result: If you’re sending documents to a law firm, FedEx works; if you’re shipping phone accessories to a customer in Asaba, DHL has the network.

Pricing and Usability

Intra-city or inter-state shipping with DHL is relatively affordable for personal and small business use. Their flat-rate pricing for standard-size packages and pre-paid labels help SMEs manage costs. Walk-in access is easy, with drop points across most commercial areas.

FedEx’s pricing model is slightly higher and skewed towards corporate clients. Their standard customer may not be an individual walking in with a package, it’s more often a business dispatching ten at once.

And from a usability perspective, DHL’s mobile tools, WhatsApp support, and integration with e-commerce platforms make it easier for everyday users to plug into their ecosystem.

Local pricing models differ:

• DHL offers flat-rate intra-city delivery starting at around ₦2,500, depending on weight.
• FedEx (via Red Star) ranges from ₦3,000 to ₦5,500, and pricing is often less predictable.

In terms of usability, DHL has better integration with WhatsApp, e-commerce fulfilment tools, and walk-in accessibility. Most SMEs prefer DHL’s prepaid labels and cash-on-delivery integration.

International Delivery: Who Handles Nigeria’s Exports Better? DHL or FedEx?

Here’s where things get interesting.

DHL:

• More integrated with customs and border control, especially for low-weight and commercial packages.
• Handles a large volume of Nigeria’s international e-commerce shipments—thanks to partnerships with Jumia, Konga, and even Shopify merchants.
• Known for speedy clearance and delivery tracking when exporting to the UK, US, Europe, and parts of Asia.
• Offers better individual-level support for walk-in international senders (e.g. families sending items abroad, job seekers submitting documents, etc.).

FedEx:

• Maintains strong lanes into North America, especially for legal and corporate documents.
• Often preferred by multinational corporations and embassies due to compliance handling and traceability.
• Less accessible to walk-in customers shipping small parcels internationally, many still get redirected to Red Star Express locations with less clarity on pricing or package status.

On international delivery, DHL again comes across as more open to the individual and SME-level shipper, while FedEx remains a more formal, high-value logistics player.

DHL:

• Handles over 50% of Nigeria’s outbound e-commerce shipments (mostly via SMEs).
• Average delivery time to the UK/Europe: 2–4 business days.
• Strong customs integration via Murtala Muhammed Airport.
• Charges for UK/US shipment start from ₦18,000 to ₦25,000 for a 0.5kg parcel.

FedEx:

• Preferred by multinationals for legal, academic, and regulatory documents.
• Average delivery time to North America: 3–5 business days.
• Limited access for low-volume, individual exporters.
• Shipping cost to UK/US ranges between ₦20,000–₦30,000 for 0.5kg parcel.

Customer Support & Trust

Both brands provide global customer service, but DHL is visibly more responsive within Nigeria. Whether through their official helpline or social media support teams, customer complaints are usually acknowledged and resolved faster.

FedEx, unfortunately, struggles with consistency. Many Nigerian users have reported delays in getting updates, confusion around tracking numbers (especially when Red Star Express is the middleman), and poor escalation protocols.

DHL Nigeria has an average rating of 4.1/5, commended for responsiveness and tracking transparency.

FedEx/Red Star Express averages 3.5/5, with complaints about poor feedback loops and delayed pickups.

Technology & Logistics Intelligence

DHL has invested more visibly in digital logistics infrastructure that speaks to Nigerian realities. Their barcode-based tracking, bulk upload systems for SMEs, and real-time location alerts give the impression of a company that understands where it’s operating.

FedEx, while globally advanced, sometimes lags in local execution. Their global website provides deep functionality, but doesn’t always reflect Nigeria’s shipping nuances, e.g. lack of Naira-based calculators, poor integration of Red Star in live tracking, and fewer customer-friendly mobile tools.

Brand Reputation in Nigeria

DHL is like a Nigerian logistics brand with German roots, FedEx still feels like a foreign logistics brand trying to adapt.

Among SMEs, vendors, and even families shipping items abroad, DHL is more trusted. Their everyday visibility, ease of use, and “we’ll find you even if your street has no name” delivery approach has created brand loyalty.

FedEx holds strong ground in structured sectors, banks, law firms, large corporates, but feels distant from the average Nigerian small business owner or hustler trying to ship goods abroad

Among everyday Nigerians:

• DHL is seen as reliable, fast, and user-friendly.
• FedEx is seen as prestigious but distant, good for serious paperwork but not urgent errands.

For corporate exports, sensitive international documents, and high-value overseas deliveries, FedEx is a trusted and solid option.

For local deliveries, SME exports, personal shipments, and end-to-end visibility, DHL is the stronger, more universal choice.

So if you’re running a business in Nigeria and need a reliable logistics partner for both inside Nigeria and outside its borders, DHL wins the day..

Nigeria is fast becoming a production and export base for fashion, tech accessories, food products, and documentation services. Logistics companies must adapt or risk becoming irrelevant.

DHL seems to be moving with the market while FedEx is still trying to meet up.

In this business, proximity to customers beats prestige. DHL has understood that, but FedEx might still be learning.

When it comes to ecommerce, there’s been an unignorable change driving retail sale, offering unparalleled convenience and an extensive array of products at customers’ fingertips.

However, with so many options available to customers, ecommerce businesses face the challenge of retaining customers and ensuring their loyalty.

Here are several innovative strategies employed by leading ecommerce entities, shaping a future where customer loyalty and retention are at the heart of every transaction.

1. Personalized Product Recommendations:

E-commerce giants such as Amazon and Jumia have leveraged the power of customer data, utilizing past purchases, browsing history, and Wishlist items to craft tailored product recommendations.

Through the anticipation of customer needs and preferences, these businesses enhance the shopping experience, making it both enjoyable and efficient.

For example, Amazon’s “Frequently Bought Together” feature intelligently suggests complementary items based on previous purchases, creating a seamless shopping journey.

2. Omnichannel Experience:

The era of omnichannel experience has dawned, ensuring customers receive a consistent, integrated shopping journey across all platforms—be it online, in-store, or via mobile.

Companies like Konga have mastered this art, enabling customers to seamlessly transition between channels while maintaining a unified account. Again, diverse communication avenues, including WhatsApp, email, and phone, offer customers flexibility, ensuring support availability regardless of their chosen method.

3. Seamless Checkout Process:

Streamlining the checkout process has become a cornerstone of customer loyalty. E-commerce leaders like Konga and Jumia have optimized their platforms, allowing customers to finalize their purchases in a few swift steps, regardless of the device used.

Offering varied payment options, from bank transfers to cash on delivery, these businesses prioritize convenience, resulting in increased loyalty and a growing base of repeat customers.

4. Loyalty Programs:

Enticing loyalty programs, exemplified by Amazon Prime and Starbucks Rewards, have become a hallmark of customer retention. These programs reward customer loyalty with exclusive perks and also deepen brand engagement and foster increased sales.

Through strategic rewards, e-commerce businesses create a symbiotic relationship, ensuring customers are not just buyers but devoted brand advocates.

5. Fast and Reliable Delivery:

Speed and reliability are the cornerstones of a successful e-commerce delivery experience. E-commerce giants like Amazon, with its Prime service, have set the bar high by offering swift shipping.

Courier giants such as FedEx and DHL provide precise tracking, ensuring transparency and elevating customer satisfaction. Fast, dependable deliveries not only meet customer expectations but also nurture trust and loyalty, creating a sense of reliability in the e-commerce landscape.

6. Exceptional Customer Service:

Uncompromising customer service stands as the bedrock of e-commerce loyalty and retention efforts. Companies like Jumia, Konga, and PayPorte employ a multi-channel strategy, offering live chat, email, and phone support. This diverse accessibility reassures customers that their needs are paramount, fostering trust and reliability. Satisfied customers become loyal patrons, reinforcing a robust connection between e-commerce giants and their cherished audience.

7. Reviews and Ratings:

In the world of ecommerce, customer testimonials hold unparalleled influence. Encouraging customers to share their experiences not only aids fellow shoppers but also provides invaluable feedback for continuous improvement.

Platforms like TripAdvisor and Yelp showcase user reviews, guiding others in their purchasing decisions and contributing to a cycle of enhancement and customer satisfaction.

[Featured Image Credit]

This will enable businesses and customers in Nigeria to gain greater access to a wider portfolio of FedEx Express shipping solutions, while Red Star Express Plc, its service provider in Nigeria continues to provide the infrastructure for ground operations.

Customers will also have access to a range of FedEx digital tools that makes shipping easier and more efficient through its website. These services include opening a new account, tracking shipment status, creating shipping air waybills, scheduling courier pickups, and managing billing. Additionally, FedEx will now have dedicated Sales and Customer Technology teams on ground to interact and provide enhanced logistics expertise to help local businesses grow internationally.

Nigeria is the largest and fastest growing economy in Africa, and the African Development Bank projects that the average growth rate for the country’s economy will increase by 3.2% between 2022 through to 2022.

Business owner who utilizes FedEx to ship products  

Taarek Hinedi, Vice President for FedEx Middle East and Africa operations, said, “Today we are closer to our customers than ever before. This strategic step makes it easier for local businesses to ship with us as they look to tap more import and export opportunities and grow their customers around the world.”

“Nigeria is on the right path for further growth and FedEx is committed to supporting this growth and connecting Nigeria to some of the biggest trading partners located in Asia and Europe. The FedEx network is crucial to provide businesses with greater connectivity between Africa and Europe as well as within the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa (AMEA) region,” said Hinedi.

“As Nigeria continues with its 2021 to 2025 National Development Plan to increase the share of its exports to Africa up to 35% from a base figure of 20%, businesses will require a range of international services and solutions to help boost the economy.”

FedEx has been facilitating trade in Nigeria since 1994, offering its international solutions through Red Star Express Plc. With this latest initiative, FedEx will continue to leverage the capabilities and infrastructure of the service provider, Red Star Express Plc, that will continue to provide pick-ups, deliveries, customs clearance services, and retail locations across the country.

The company remains committed to supporting the Nigerian Government’s Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP), to drive structural reforms to diversify its economy and reduce dependency on oil. The FedEx direct presence in the country will help connect Nigerian business owners, exporters, importers, and consumers to more than 220 countries and territories worldwide, covering more than 99% of the world’s gross domestic product.

In fact, the World Bank said in a new study that central banks around the world have been raising interest rates this year with a degree of synchronicity not seen over the past five decades, a trend that is likely to continue.

Investors expect central banks to raise global monetary policy rates to almost four percent through 2023, an increase of more than two percentage points over their 2021 average.

However, Subramaniam’s comments followed the release of poor first-quarter financial data and the announcement of a number of drastic cost-cutting initiatives to assist the company weather the impending storm.

“I think so. But you know, these numbers, they don’t portend very well, “Subramaniam said in response to a question about whether the economy was “going into a worldwide recession.”

FedEx faced a decline in shipments around the globe “as macroeconomic trends significantly worsened later in the quarter,” the company said. It reported earnings of $3.44 a share, significantly below the analysts’ consensus of $5.14.

FedEx and Microsoft will bring together FedEx network intelligence with capabilities from Microsoft Dynamics 365 to introduce a cross-platform “logistics as a service” for retailers, merchants and brands.

The companies share a vision for reimagining commerce experiences for businesses so they can offer their consumers more integrated ways to shop, and faster, more efficient deliveries.

In today’s world of just-in-time supply chains, global trade and accelerated e-commerce growth, speed, flexibility and visibility are critical.

Customer needs and expectations have shifted across every industry.

Together, FedEx and Microsoft are using tools like artificial intelligence and machine learning to extrapolate new insights from the 17 million packages that pass through the FedEx network each day to help brands deliver improved customer experiences.

Cross-platform, logistics as a service solution for brands

The companies announced plans to introduce a unique data integration coupling data insights from FedEx with Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management to help brands access new information and capabilities to better fulfill, ship and service customer orders while easily integrating with their existing e-commerce platforms.

This cross-platform approach helps brands deliver modern, high-value experiences directly to their customers including faster, more cost-effective delivery; near real-time delivery status communications; and convenient, frictionless returns with approximately 60,000 drop-off locations and printerless QR codes.

For brands facing increased pressure to build affinity while managing higher order volumes, ensuring cost-effective fulfilment and reducing costly customer service calls, this new technology brings unprecedented opportunity to leverage existing systems of record, optimize fulfillment and deliver on their order promises with increased precision, while benefiting from a more complete view of their customer.

“Nearly two years ago we set out on a mission with Microsoft to transform the commerce ecosystem,” said Raj Subramaniam, president and COO of FedEx Corp. “In that time, we’ve made significant progress, leveraging Microsoft Azure technology with our FedEx Surround solution, which provides critical support in enabling advanced monitoring of time-sensitive priority shipments. This next phase of our collaboration will continue to connect the unmatched supply chain insights from the FedEx network with the Microsoft Cloud to improve e-commerce experiences for brands, merchants and consumers.”

Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management uses data and AI to create an omnichannel order management application that integrates with existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems and can leverage an ecosystem of other order source systems such as online e-commerce marketplaces, mobile apps and social commerce alongside traditional ordering channels like electronic data interchange (EDI) or brick and mortar point-of-sale.

The platform is equipped with prebuilt connectors to the leading tools brands already use for omnichannel order intake, cross-channel order fulfillment and delivery, and rules-based order orchestration actions within a low-code/no-code environment that uses AI and machine learning.

Coupled with data and visibility into the FedEx network, the companies aim to empower businesses with new, innovative ways to better serve their customers.

“More than ever, it’s clear just how critical having a resilient supply chain is for every organization’s success in the modern economy,” said Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO, Microsoft. “We’re bringing data and insights from the FedEx network together with the Microsoft Cloud, starting with Dynamics 365, to help organizations accelerate their digital transformation across their business operations so they can offer customers more integrated ways to shop, and faster, more efficient deliveries.”

Empowering all industries with increased logistics supply chain visibility

FedEx and Microsoft joined forces in May 2020 to enable businesses to better compete in today’s increasingly digital commerce ecosystem.

The pandemic has dramatically accelerated e-commerce adoption and the digital transformations of business of all sizes. Pre-pandemic, FedEx projected that the U.S. domestic package market would hit 100 million packages per day by calendar year 2026.

The market is now expected to hit this mark four years sooner than expected, growing to 110 million packages a day in 2022 — with 86% of that growth expected to come from e-commerce.

FedEx Surround, the first FedEx customer-facing solution built using Microsoft Azure cloud technology, is a testament to the collaboration’s innovative potential and immediate impact on how data is used in logistics.

Built to leverage the millions of data points across the FedEx network, the FedEx Surround platform leverages AI, machine learning and analytics solutions to proactively monitor the risk to FedEx packages along a delivery route — such as weather disruptions or traffic delays.

This near real-time information provides customers with visibility to the state of their supply chain and allows them to proactively plan remediation and alternatives that FedEx can help execute to keep a shipment on track.

FedEx Surround was deployed in December 2020 and has been instrumental in supporting COVID-19 vaccine transportation. The platform enabled FedEx to manage monitoring this significant increase in priority shipment volume.

Availability

Seamless FedEx data integration with Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management is expected to be available to customers in the U.S. in the second half of 2022.

[Source: Microsoft]