The Flutterwave story ~ A Nigerian payment solution for Africans
Africa is still rising.
Commerce and trade in Nigeria
albeit, in Africa hold potential for growth if they can access a larger
less-fragmented African market. The signing of the landmark continental Free
Trade area (CFTA) by 44 countries in Kigali in March 2018 offers hope for
increased intra-Africa trade. Similarly, the African Union’s Agenda 2063 calls
for increased intra-African trade from the current 16% to over 25% by 2025.
Payment systems and other infrastructures are an enabler for economic growth and
the development of strong and secure financial market infrastructures is
important in helping to drive more cross-border trade within Africa and with
the rest of the world.
Although retail payments are a
major component of the digital payment landscape, especially in Sub-Saharan
Africa, in many countries where mobile money proliferates, merchants remain off
the digital payments grid. One major reason for this is that there is no common
platform connecting all customers throughout the market that merchants can
connect to as well. Customers and services stand apart in their own silos. Thus any payment system that can meet globally
accepted standards and connect customers as well as merchants to all available
payment channels, will not only facilitate trade and commerce in Nigeria (and
Africa) but will also open the continent up to global trade and investments.
The key function here is interoperability.
Flutterwave is an online
payment technology solution with a mission to inspire a new wave of prosperity
across Africa. Flutterwave provides technology, infrastructure and services to
enable global merchants, payment service providers and Pan African Banks, by
building payments infrastructure to connect Africa to the global economy. With
headquarters in San Francisco and offices in Lagos, Nairobi, Accra and
Johannesburg, Flutterwave builds the infrastructure to ease payment processing
and provides businesses with a powerful, reliable and intelligent payment
gateway. It was founded in 2016 by Iyinoluwa Aboyeji and Olugbenga Agboola
along with a team of ex-bankers, entrepreneurs and engineers. The company was
part of the summer 2016 batch at YCombinator and is currently a post-Series A company
which has raised $20.4m in funding over 9 rounds since being founded. Their
last funding was raised on Oct. 15, 2018 from a Series A round. The four major
investors in Flutterwave are Y Combinator, Greycroft, Google Launchpad and
Green Visor Capital. There are 21 other investors too.
With over $2.5B in payments
process, over 100 million transactions, 50 Bank partners across Africa and over
1200 developers at works, Flutterwave is geared to disrupt online payments in
Africa and ensure full financial inclusion of Africa and Africans in the new
global economy powered by the internet.
How does Flutterwave intend to
achieve these laudable goals?
Flutterwave Products
Flutterwave’s payment
solutions have been deployed through products targeted at specific markets.
Their flagship products are Barter and Rave.
The
GetBarter App
This is a lifestyle product for individuals of
varying levels and it can be accessed by downloading the app either on the
Apple App Store on Android Google Play.
One interesting thing about this product is that
it enables you to send money to anyone with the person’s phone number. To
receive the sum, the person receives an alert on watsapp and sms with a link to
download the app and open a Barter account into which the sum is credited.
Interesting from the dashboard of Barter app, you can perform various other
transactions such as utility bill payments, subscription payments, online money
transfer, virtual card creation for both naira and dollar payments. Payments on
the GetBarter app can be scheduled for specific dates and if you are short on
cash, you can apply for a short term loan on the app.
Another interesting innovation on this app is the
‘Request Money’ feature with which one can request money from phone book
contacts. You can imagine how valuable this feature will be to students who get
the hang of it!.
The GetBarter app is a banking app, mini-financial
planner, fund raiser all rolled into one. It does deserve the term ‘your better
(financial) half’! *smiles*
This is a web enabled payment solution for African
businesses, who can register on the product under any of the available three
categories; as an individual (for freelancers, sole traders and unregistered
businesses), as a Registered business, as a non-profit or NGO. Upon
registration, businesses are introduced to a dashboard with tools to manage and
process payments and payouts. Analytical insights into business payments,
payouts and general cash flow are also provided.
Businesses within the Rave payments ecosystem are
able to accept global payments from cards, bank accounts and through USSD as
rave supports payments in many currencies from 154+ countries. Rave enables
these businesses by providing APIs for linking websites, custom Apps or
e-commerce sites and there is also has a forum for developers where questions
and feedback are given. With connections to shopify, Quickbook, Sage, Xero,
Squarespace and Zoho, Rave makes e-commerce and business accounting so much
easier for businesses in its payment ecosystem.
Rave is a PCI and PADSS certified solution with
fraud management tools such as 3D Secure. Rave makes it easier for African
businesses to do business in Africa and with the world by providing secure
reliable tools for payment processing.
With a well-priced fee structure, standard
settlements timeframe free set up and integration, no periodic fees (just
transaction fees), Flutterwave also offers out-of-the-box payment customization
services for its customers.
Currently, Flutterwave has connected Nigeria,
Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, Rwanda and it is in the process of
connecting more African countries to the world as hiring and setting up is
ongoing in about 10 more African countries.
Some major recent achievements have been
partnership with Visa to create the Barter app services for consumers and
integration with Alipay which is projected to open up Africa to over 1 billion
Alipay users.
Of course, there are other African alternatives to
Flutterwave and yes, from time to time there are hitches in Flutterwave’s
payment processing.
However we are well aware that that this company
is barely three years old and well on its way to achieving the ambitious goals
it has set for itself.
In conclusion, in over 400 years of global
economic engagement in Africa – from slavery through colonialism, primary resource
development and ultimately development aid – there has been little focus on
payment methods. Payment systems overwhelmingly relied upon cash, reflecting
the extractive nature of most relationship. This has been the bane of
development in Africa and one major reason for the large economic divide
between Africa and other continents inspite of it beinga resource rich
continent. However, Africa is now rising and Africans, like Flutterwave are
providing African solutions like payment platforms to solve some of the
continent’s major problems, including poverty.
Flutterwave is a Nigerian solution to the African
problem of connecting Africans to each other and to the world. In the history
of payments in Africa, the strides being made by Flutterwave will count as
milestones. It will be interesting to watch and see them achieve the audacious
ambition of interoperability across Africa, bearing in mind the pitfalls of
other major attempts at connecting Africans to each other and to the world
This is an African story and we must not wait for others to tell it. We ought to document it and tell it to the world ourselves, lest our stories get hijacked. Like the opening paragraph says, ‘Unless the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter’ – Chinua Achebe.
