Flutterwave announces partnership with PayPal to enable merchants make and receive payments

• Company considering plans for a New York Listing

Charles Abuede

Just days after successfully completing a Series C round of funding from international investors, in what was praised as the giant stride to becoming Africa’s newest unicorn, Payment giant, Flutterwave, has announced its partnership with US PayPal to facilitate online payments among Customers in Africa through its platforms.

The payment giant in a statement revealed that the partnership will connect small and medium businesses with over 377 million PayPal account holders across the globe as it will eliminate the cross-border comer barrier and adding that Flutterwave’s integration with the US PayPal will be in operation across 50 countries of Africa and globally.

According to the statement by Olugbenga Agboola, who is the chief executive officer of Flutterwave, he revealed that the integration with PayPal will allow merchants add PayPal as a payment option with the ‘pay with PayPal’ feature when receiving money outside of Africa.

“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. In a nutshell, we’re bringing more than 300 million PayPal users to African businesses so they can accept payments across the continent,” he stated.

Recent data from PayPal’s financials revealed that the company’s over 377 million users conducted transactions worth $936 billion in total payment volume for the year-end 2020 while the advent of the global pandemic has pushed many people into relying on mobile apps and others for shopping and paying bills. Thus, the San-Jose, California-based firm has profited massively from this boom in online transactions which has pushed businesses into the virtual realm.

What does this mean? The partnership between the two payment giants is a pointer of what’s to come in the future of digital payments across the globe. Also, this is paving way for Flutterwave to be regarded as a major player in the industry following its market valuation which has risen to the unicorn rank of a billion-dollar valuation. Nevertheless, it is a way to break into various markets in several countries with poor regulatory and banking services.

In a related development, Olugbenga, the co-founder and CEO of Flutterwave has also hinted on the plans of the company to list on the New York Stock Exchange. Though, the date for the float is not yet made public by the company.