- PayPal, which is one of the world’s leading online money transfer names, will work with African payments infrastructure company Flutterwave on a series of new features designed to help merchants on the continent sell abroad.
- It is now available to business customers on Flutterwave’s books, though it will soon also be available to a wider group of people – including individuals who sell items.
- A senior figure at Flutterwave said that the company wanted to offer both its own payments infrastructure and also that of firms such as PayPal to enhance the customer experience.
International money transfers provider PayPal has confirmed that it will work with the payments firm Flutterwave to bring improved transfer services to Africa.
The move is set to rectify a long-standing problem for payment services customers in Africa – namely the lack of coverage from PayPal.
Now, individuals around the world who are buying products or services from those based in Africa will be able to do so using the ‘Pay with PayPal’ service.
In practice, this means that sellers and commercial organisations in Africa can now tap into the global PayPal market – which is believed to be composed of in excess of 377 million account holders.
It will be offered via an integration option that links up PayPal and Flutterwave.
Those who are already signed up to Flutterwave as business-grade sellers can use the new service immediately.
It will be available in 50 of Africa’s nations.
Soon, the firm said, it will be able to open up the service to individual users.
In a statement, the firm’s chief executive officer Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola said that the effects would be felt continent-wide.
“In a nutshell, we’re bringing more than 300 million PayPal users to African businesses so they can accept payments across the continent,” he said in an interview with technology news website TechCrunch.
He went on to say that a globalised approach is at the core of the company’s aims.
“Our mission at the company has always been to simplify payments for endless possibilities, and from when we started, it has always been about global payments,” he explained.
He said that the firm’s own payment architecture could also work in tandem with other payment systems to provide the best possible service.
“So despite having the largest payment infrastructure in Africa, we want to have arguably all the important payments systems in the world on our platform,” he added.
The news follows a positive week for Flutterwave.
Last week the firm announced the completion of a Series C funding round that saw it raise US$170m.
This was led by Tiger Global and Avenir Growth Capital.
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