Flutterwave and PayPal announce collaboration to allow African merchants to make and receive payments

Nigerian FinTech startup Flutterwave has announced a new collaboration with payments giant PayPal. The announcement came after the startup closed a $170 million Series C funding round, according to TechCrunch.

It has been challenging and nearly impossible for businesses in some parts of Africa to access payments for PayPal due to insufficient regulation and poor banking security. Since PayPal’s expansion to Africa, it has only offered on side of its offerings to most countries on the continent, allowing them to only send money but not receive payment. Only a few African countries can send and receive money on the platform, according to its website. These countries include Algeria, Botswana, Egypt, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Senegal, Seychelles, and South Africa.

PayPal users in other African countries either have to use the accounts of a friend or family member to receive payments in countries that receive payments or deal with the challenge of searching for other options.

The new collaboration has introduced a new feature on the Flutterwave app, ‘Pay with PayPal’ which allows Africans receive payments seamlessly via the PayPal platform. African businesses are now able to connect with the existing accounts on PayPal’s global platform to help access more business opportunities and resolve the years-long poor banking infrastructure in Africa.

“In a nutshell, we’re bringing more than 300 million PayPal users to African businesses so they can accept payments across the continent,” said Olugbenga Agboola, CEO of Flutterwave. “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. 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.”

Flutterwave said its collaboration with PayPal will be operational across 50 African countries, including Nigeria. Thanks to the pandemic, online payment systems have become more popular as more people process their business payments and transactions online. The partnership between Flutterwave and PayPal is strategic as more companies are increasingly making payments online these days.

The startup told Reuters that upon its recent $1 billion valuation, it is considering publicly listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Flutterwave said its target is to become the leading payments platform in Africa as it creates more opportunities for multinationals seeking new markets.

Although both companies are yet to say how exactly this partnership benefits their businesses, there is no doubt that they are on the right path for both companies’ future goals.

“By working with PayPal, we can further strengthen our commitment to our customers and service users as we will be enabling them to transact and expand their business operations to reach new markets,” Agboola told TechCrunch. “PayPal’s global reach is unrivaled, and collaborating with them allows our customers to explore new markets where PayPal is embedded.”

There have been a few concerns about what would happen when PayPal eventually allows other African countries to automatically receive payments on its platform? Many have wondered the possibility of both platforms coexisting if that happens.