Flutterwave Partnres With Paypal To Ease African Merchant Payments

Nigerian fintech company PayPal announced today that it has made a new collaboration with global payment leader PayPal to enable African merchants to receive and make payments using PayPal.

It had been extremely difficult for businesses in many African countries to receive money from PayPal for reasons yet unclear. But the new partnership will enable PayPal users worldwide to pay businesses and service providers on the continent through Flutterwave’s platform, connecting them to more than 377 million PayPal account holders globally.

READ MORE: Flutterwave Raises $170bn, Achieves Unicorn Status With $1bn Valuation

Pay with Paypal is now available on Flutterwave! ??

All Paypal users can now pay African businesses from anywhere in the world, on our gateway. We’re excited to be opening up a world of opportunities for businesses in Africa!

Find out more here: https://t.co/75hFiWUccQ pic.twitter.com/czL5YiMAp2

— Flutterwave (@theflutterwave) March 16, 2021

According to CEO Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola, this will happen via a Flutterwave integration with PayPal so merchants can add PayPal as a payment option when receiving money outside the continent. The service, which is already available for merchants with registered business accounts on Flutterwave, will be operational across 50 African countries and worldwide, the company claims. Flutterwave hopes to roll out this service to individual merchants on the platform as well. 

 

As we build the largest payment infrastructure in Africa @theflutterwave , we also know that Africa does not exist in isolation. We need to connect Africa to the world when it comes to payments and we took a closer step to that today pic.twitter.com/EWnWBv3RHM

— GB ? (@TechProd_Arch) March 16, 2021

This move spells a wider spread by the global payment giant PayPal into the African market space, whose total value of e-commerce in Africa was $16.5 billion in 2017 and expected to reach $29 billion by 2022, according to data from Statista.

Since the company’s expansion to Africa, it has maintained a one-sided relationship with most countries on the continent, allowing them only to send money. And according to its website, only 12 African countries can send and receive money on the platform, but to varying degrees. They include Algeria, Botswana, Egypt, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Senegal, Seychelles, and South Africa.

Users in countries who are not afforded the luxury to do so have to rely on using the PayPal account of a friend or family, based in countries where payments can be received. Next, they request the funds via bank transfer, leading to more incurred costs or use other cross-border money platforms like WorldRemit.