MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: Flutterwave, Alibaba Group’s Alipay to Offer Digital Payments Between Africa, China

Flutterwave, a US-based business-to-business (B2B) payments service that focuses on Africa, recently began collaborating with Alipay, a payments unit of the Chinese technology conglomerate Alibaba Group, to provide digital payments from Africa to China and vice versa. Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga Agboola commented, “There’s a lot of trade between Africa and China, and this integration makes it easier for African merchants to accept Chinese customer payments.” The firm will charge a fee of 3.8 percent on each transaction.

Founded in 2016, Flutterwave is a financial technology firm based in San Francisco with offices in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. Its payments service, Rave, offers B2B payments for companies in Africa. Its Barter mobile application assists individuals with budgeting. As of 2019, Flutterwave has 60,000 merchants on its Rave platform as well as 50 bank partners. The firm has processed 100 million payments worth a total of USD 2.5 billion since its inception.

Alipay, which was founded in 2004, is a mobile and online tool that offers the following services: (1) sending money to individuals; (2) paying bills; and (3) making purchases remotely and at points of sale via quick response (QR) codes. Alipay reports having 1 billion users as of August 2019.

Alibaba Group is the owner of the China-based e-commerce firm Alibaba. The group has total assets of RMB 965 billion (USD 144 billion) and total equity of RMB 609 billion (USD 90.7 billion) as of March 2019.

By Eugene DeCosse, Research Associate

Sources and Additional Resources

Flutterwave press release
https://flutterwave.com/us/blog/product-updates/flutterwave-merchants-now-have-access-to-over-1-billion-potential-customers/

Tech Chrunch article
https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/flutterwave-and-alipay-partner-on-payments-between-africa-and-china/

Flutterwave homepage
https://flutterwave.com/

Alipay homepage
https://intl.alipay.com/

Alibaba Group homepage
https://www.alibabagroup.com/

Alibaba Group financials
https://www.alibabagroup.com/en/ir/earnings

MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: Alipay, GCash Upgrade AlipayHK App for Users in Hong Kong to Send Remittances to the Philippines Using Blockchain
https://www.microcapital.org/microcapital-brief-alipay-gcash-upgrade-alipayhk-app-for-users-in-hong-kong-to-send-remittances-to-the-philippines-using-blockchain/

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