Launched in April of 2020, the Flutterwave Store was created to help small businesses set up online shops following pandemic-related lockdowns across various countries. Since then, the online portal has grown to over 30,000 businesses, and includes additional features like discount codes and multiple product uploads. With Flutterwave Market, the startup is putting all these Flutterwave Stores in one place, making it easier for consumers to discover and shop for products from different businesses, while helping online merchants find new customers and markets to boost sales and revenue. The market will also display the stores across various countries and product categories, such as men’s and women’s fashion, beauty, and food, and will use features like product search, category display and country filter to improve the shopping experience. Once orders are placed, shoppers will have the option to get the products delivered to their preferred locations.
The San Francisco and Nigeria-based FinTech announced the acquisition of Disha, a Nigeria-based platform where digital creators curate and receive payments from their digital content sales and portfolios worldwide. These announcements come on the heels of recent big-name partnership deals involving the payments firm, and reports that the company was in talks with potential backers for new funding at a minimum valuation of $3 billion, about triple its current value. The payments firm announced a partnership with the nonprofit Stellar Development Foundation to introduce two new remittance passageways on the Stellar cross-country transaction system, which will simplify remittances in Africa and enable cross-border payments from Europe to Africa. The firm announced another collaboration with Standard Bank, Africa’s largest bank by assets, to provide Standard’s individual and business customers in nine African countries with access to Flutterwave’s enhanced digital payments system. The two companies also plan to build eCommerce, card issuing, buy now, pay later (BNPL) and other capabilities for the millions in the region. Flutterwave has grown to become one of the fastest-growing payments companies in the world, processing about 140 million transactions worth over $9 billion since its launch. The firm operates across over 33 African countries, serving over 300,000 merchants including clients like Uber, Booking.com, Flywire and Facebook.