Two of Nigeria’s biggest fintech players, Paga and Flutterwave, have partnered to simplify and deepen payment solutions in Nigeria and across the African continent.
The collaboration involves Flutterwave, an international merchant payment service, adding Paga as a payment option on its platform, thereby giving the latter’s customers the opportunity to pay a large pool of merchants directly from their Paga Wallet.
According to Paga, a mobile payment platform founded by Tayo Oviosu in 2009, the partnership immediately opens up Flutterwave’s merchants base of airlines, media outfits, hotels, ticketing companies, fashion retailers, etc. to its customers.
With over 14 million users of its mobile wallet, Paga, which allows users to transfer money electronically and make payments through their mobile devices, has processed more than $3 billion worth of transactions from 48 million transactions since its launch.
While Paga’s customers are expected to be the biggest winners from the partnership as they get to reach a wide range of merchants with a simple, secure and one-click payment, Jay Alabraba, Paga Co-founder and Director of Business Development, described the collaboration as a “win-win situation.”
“By partnering with Flutterwave on their gateway, we give our customers access to quickly make payments to an even larger pool of merchants. The customer has a faster payment option and the merchant gets their money seamlessly,” Alabraba explained. “Most importantly, the service is end-to-end secure.”
Meanwhile, Olugbenga Agboola, Co-Founder and CEO of Flutterwave, said that the deal was to simplify payment solutions for merchants and customers and allow them access to more offerings.
“We’re excited to connect all businesses on Flutterwave to Paga’s rapidly growing customer base where a new wave of prosperity across Nigeria, Africa, and the World will be witnessed as a result of this and that’s why we are here,” Agboola said.
Flutterwave Inc is a payment startup founded by Iyinoluwa Aboyeji and Olugbenga Agboola to build underlying payments infrastructure for African businesses to accept a card, mobile money, and bank account payments in a single place.
In recent times, the company has secured several big-name partnerships. Collaborations with Visa and WorldPay, an international payment processing firm owned by FIS, were announced in January on the back of similar ones last year involving Flutterwave and Alipay – the payment arm of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba – as well as another with Visa, which led to the launch of Barter, a cross-border consumer payment product for Africans.
