Flutterwave Marketplace Helps Africa’s Small Businesses Reach New Buyers

Africa SMB

In a move to scale small and medium-sized business (SMB) growth, Flutterwave, Africa’s leading payments technology company, has announced the launch of its new eCommerce service, Flutterwave Market, an extension of the company’s Flutterwave Store service.

Read more: Flutterwave Rolls out Online Portal for African Merchants

Launched in April of 2020, the Flutterwave Store was created to help small businesses set up online shops following pandemic-related lockdowns across various countries. Since then, the online portal has grown to over 30,000 businesses, and includes additional features like discount codes and multiple product uploads.

With Flutterwave Market, the startup is putting all of these Flutterwave Stores in one place, making it easier for consumers to discover and shop for products from different businesses, while helping online merchants find new customers and markets to boost sales and revenue.

The market will also display the stores across various countries and product categories, such as men’s and women’s fashion, beauty and food, and will use features like product search, category display and country filter to improve the shopping experience. Once orders are placed, shoppers will have the option to get the products delivered to their preferred locations.

Commenting on the announcement, the company’s Founder and CEO Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola said that the “Flutterwave Market is a fully functional eCommerce service that serves as a megastore where buyers can purchase a variety of goods from multiple sellers under one roof.”

He added that after the successful rollout of the Flutterwave Store, launching the new marketplace became a necessary next step to help its merchant clients transform and scale their businesses. “Flutterwave Market is a way to create endless possibilities for our Flutterwave Store users,” he noted. “We’re not merely aggregating existing stores — we’re positioning them to make more sales.”

Related news: Flutterwave Pursues Aggressive Expansion Strategy Across Africa With Disha Acquisition

And that is only one step the company has taken in recent weeks to help small businesses. Earlier this month, the San Francisco and Nigeria-based FinTech announced the acquisition of Disha, a Nigeria-based platform where digital creators curate and receive payments from their digital content sales and portfolios worldwide.

As PYMNTS reported, the deal couldn’t have come at a better time for Disha, which announced earlier this year that it was closing for undisclosed reasons. Under the terms of the deal, Disha’s 20,000 users can earn value for their digital content using Flutterwave’s payouts and collections solution, while operating as a separate brand.

At the time, Agboola said the investment was a way for the cross-border payments startup to support the growth of creators on Disha and provide new opportunities for freelancers and creators.

Read more: Nigeria’s Flutterwave Raises $170M on $1B Valuation 

These announcements come on the heels of recent big-name partnership deals involving the payments firm, and reports that the company was in talks with potential backers for new funding at a minimum valuation of $3 billion, about triple its current value.

Related news: Flutterwave Enables X-Border Payments From Europe to Africa

Last month, the payments firm announced a partnership with the nonprofit Stellar Development Foundation to introduce two new remittance passageways on the Stellar cross-country transaction system, which will simplify remittances in Africa and enable cross-border payments from Europe to Africa.

Read more: Big-Name Partnerships Advance Continent-Wide Ambitions of Pan-African Payments Startup Flutterwave

The firm announced another collaboration with Standard Bank, Africa’s largest bank by assets, to provide Standard’s individual and business customers in nine African countries with access to Flutterwave’s enhanced digital payments system. The two companies also plan to build eCommerce, card issuing, buy now, pay later (BNPL) and other capabilities for the millions in the region.

Learn more: PayPal, Flutterwave Deal Targets African Market

Founded in 2016, Flutterwave has grown to become one of the fastest-growing payments companies in the world, processing about 140 million transactions worth over $9 billion since its launch. The firm operates across over 33 African countries, serving over 300,000 merchants including clients like Uber, Booking.com, Flywire and Facebook.

According to a PYMNTS report, the firm was one of the many beneficiaries of the pandemic-induced digital shift in payments, recording revenue growth of 225% between 2018 and 2020.

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