Flutterwave Review - Africa's Biggest Online Payment Technology Solution
Tags: flutterwave, fintech, mastercard, visa
Published: 2019-09-28 09:04:04

Flutterwave Review — Africa’s Biggest Online Payment Technology Solution

Fintech has come a long way in Nigeria.

From the days of traveling long miles to execute transactions to using cash machines, and now, a fully-fledge on-the-web banking system, the evolution has swept through the core of our financial corridors.

One of the frontmen of the revolution is Flutterwave.

Flutterwave was conceived by 26-year old (as at the time) entrepreneur, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, in 2014, when he moved to pull down the barriers that withheld Nigerians and Africans from conveniently executing international transfers.

Fast-forward to today, Flutterwave has become a holy grail for consumers and business people to pay for things in their local currencies.

Although we are still at least a thousand miles from becoming a Fintech utopia, Flutterwave has breached the gap that existed between buyers and sellers across the globe.

Overview

Flutterwave is a financial company headquatered in San Francisco and operates in Africa.

They grant clients’ access to its APIs to customize their payment solution so that they process cross-border transactions seamlessly.

Flutterwave has more than 60,000 merchants on its platform and their revenue source is from charging a standard 3.8% on all international transactions.

As at the time of writing this, Flutterwave has successfully processed over 100 million transactions that amount to more than $2 billion, and they service some high-level clients such as Jumia, Uber, amongst others.

They help eCommerce owners, freelancers, and virtually anybody that needs to send or receive money online — both locally and internationally, without the usually geographic restrictions that have plagued certain Pan Africa countries in the past years.

Think of Flutterwave as PayPal, but without the hectic bureaucracy that users face more often than none.

At its core, it is as powerful as PayPal and Payoneer. Like PayPal, Flutterwave provides merchant accounts and a payment service provider through its Wave solution, and like Payoneer, they have a strong focus on international transactions with its rate as low as they come.

Flutterwave also facilitates the transfer of funds among users and you will not see a similar platform that serves Africans.

Product and Services

Flutterwave is a merchant account provider in that it provides a payment gateway and terminal. Let’s take a look at some of its best features.

Rave

Flutterwave’s flagship product Rave allows businesses and their customers to connect with their banks anywhere in the world to process both online and offline payment.

The product already supports up to 98% of payment types in the world.

Rave accepts a wide range of payment methods, including all types of card payments, bank payments both locally and abroad, and mobile wallet payments from third-party platforms like M-Cash, TIGO, MTN and so on.

It supports over 150 currencies worldwide and lets businesses manage their payments and revenue from one dashboard.

GetBarter

Sometime this year, Flutterwave announced that it has partnered with Visa to launch a new product called GetBarter.

Unlike Rave, Barter not only targets B2B, but it also combines B2B and B2C at a go.

With Barter, customers can perform transactions that a Physical debit or credit card can do, but with a virtual Visa card that is linked to the app.

According to Flutterwave CEO, this innovation will help “pretty much everyone who has a payment need in Africa”.

Users can make both local and international transactions on their mobile phones and would be charged roughly 11 cents per transaction.

Flutterwave have also partnered with Tempo money transfer, Shopify, QuickbookZoho, Zoho and other global payment companies in the past.

Pros and Cons of Flutterwave solution

Pros
•Low fraud risk
•Supports a wide range of third-party apps
•The option of account or card transactions
•Sleek user interface
•Easy to setup
•Fair pricing
•Wide segregation of currencies

Cons
•Slow customer service
•Channel or network transactional error
•Unavailability of PoS machine

Achievements

For a company that was founded barely three years ago, Flutterwave has successfully revolutionized the FinTech Industry in Nigeria and across Africa, enough to warrant the award of best payment company in Africa.

It has enabled young Africans to break new strides in their entrepreneurship struggle and has power over 100 million transactions in the process.

Flutterwave has successfully partnered with more than 50 African banks and a host of other top international companies, and even then, it is projected to break new strides in the financial space in the years to come

Fees and Rates

Flutterwave is transparent about its pricing as most of its charges will be found on the company’s website.

Here’s a breakdown of its pricing:

•Local payments made via MasterCard, Visa, Bank Account and USSD incur a flat rate of 1.4% subjected to a cap of ₦2000
•International payment incurs a 3.8% processing fee
•Payouts to banks incur a charge of ₦45 per transaction

Wrapping up

It comes as no surprise that Flutterwave’s popularity has grown exponentially across African and it can only be attributed to the fact that it is a simple and easy way to issue and accept payments.

You will find a lot of companies that offer similar financial services, but Flutterwave’s ability to handle a large number of transactions and still provide a payment gateway for clients at low cost is what makes it a compelling choice.