Flutterwave Rolls Out Online Portal For African Merchants

The startup Flutterwave, which picked up $35 million last year in venture funding, has launched an online portal that will enable African businesses to set up online shops.

The FinTech company, based in both San Francisco and Nigeria, secured the venture capital (VC) investment from Worldpay, which has also struck a strategic partnership with the firm.

At the time, Flutterwave said it would use the funding to further build out its technology and continue expanding throughout Africa. The company said it would focus on making it easier for African businesses to make payments to other companies, both on the continent and elsewhere.

The company told TechCrunch that its newly launched product, called Flutterwave Store, is not a shift away from the company’s core online payments business. The company aims to speed up the rollout of the eCommerce product due to COVID-19’s restrictions on the operations of many small businesses in Africa.

The Flutterwave Store will not warehouse its customers’ wares, and will focus on helping the small businesses find clients. There will be no fees to set up online storefronts; Flutterwave will charge based on actual payments.

The company said it will keep its new eCommerce platform even after the COVID-19 pandemic is over, with plans to roll out the new product in 15 African countries.

Via its partnerships with WorldPay and Visa, Flutterwave will serve as the African payment provider for WorldPay’s clients, with the ability to issue physical and virtual credit cards and to process payments. The goal is to take advantage of Africa’s growing payments market while expanding Flutterwave. The company said it planned to target expansion efforts in northern and Francophone Africa.

The Flutterwave store will work through existing third-party logistics providers, such as Sendy in Kenya and Sendbox Nigeria.

Also in 2019, Flutterwave hooked up with Chinese Alibaba’s Alipay to facilitate digital payments between Africa and China.