PayPal partners Flutterwave to democratise payment across Africa

American company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, PayPal has collaborated with  Nigeria’s fintech company that provides a payment infrastructure for global merchants and payment service providers across the continent, Flutterwave to democratise payment across Africa

Prior to now, it is practically impossible for businesses in some African countries to receive money from PayPal.

While the payments giant has not given reasons why this is so, speculation hints at factors like insufficient regulation and poor banking security in said countries.

That might be a thing of the past for some businesses as African payments company Flutterwave today is announcing a collaboration with PayPal to allow PayPal customers globally to pay African merchants through its ‘Pay with PayPal’ feature.

According to a statement by Flutterwave, the integration with PayPal is live and operational across 50 African countries and worldwide.

That means small business owners and freelancers who use Flutterwave in places like Kenya, South Africa, Egypt, Morocco, Mauritius, Malawi, Mozambique & Senegal will be able to accept payments from PayPal users worldwide.

Olugbenga Agboola, Flutterwave’s CEO, said the partnership reinforces the Nigerian company’s vision of “creating a seamless digital payments system for Africa’s business communities that can now transact with international consumers.”

The move comes barely a week after Flutterwave announced the close of a $170 million Series C round which values it as a unicorn.

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

Today, we are announcing an important step towards achieving our mission and goals. We @theflutterwave have collaborated with @PayPal to allow businesses in Africa receive payments from over 377 million @PayPal users all over the world. pic.twitter.com/h0tDPIOGwd

— GB ? (@TechProd_Arch) March 16, 2021

In 2014, PayPal explored making its services available in Nigeria by offering remittance inflows into the country from the diaspora. But they did not allow merchants in Nigeria to receive payments through PayPal, supposedly due to a perception that online fraud was pervasive.

Indeed, PayPal was available on Rave by Flutterwave (which is Flutterwave’s product for businesses) in 2017 but this appears to have been only for a brief period.

Four years later, PayPal returns with the whole package.