Flutterwave Launches E-commerce Platform for Small Businesses in Africa

• Lagos and San Francisco based startup, Flutterwave, has launched an eCommerce platform called Flutterwave Store.
• The service will be free for merchants, as Flutterwave will charge payments only.
• The company will also partner with logistics operators like the Sendbox in Nigeria and the Sendy in Kenya to support pickup and delivery merchants.

Lagos and San Francisco based startup, Flutterwave, has launched an eCommerce platform called Flutterwave Store. The eCommerce platform will enable African merchants to sell online by building digital shops.

The Flutterwave Store is the startup’s response to the current pandemic, however, CEO, Olugbenga Agboola, says the service will still be available after the pandemic.

He also pointed out that the new offering is not a change from what is familiar to Flutterwave: a payment infrastructure company.

“It’s not a direction change. We’re still a B2B payment infrastructure company. We are not moving into becoming an online retailer, and no we’re not looking to become Jumia,” he said.

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Judging from Flutterwave’s Twitter account where the startup conducted five ‘Grow My Business’ webinars via Zoom, Flutterwave seems to have had this in the works for quite some time. To establish a shop, merchants are required to fill in the necessary details about themselves and bank accounts while visiting the website.

After that a merchant ID is allocated to carry out customer transactions. The platform allows SMEs create online stores without any inventory requirements and the startup says this service will help SMEs in the 15 African countries it is launching (which includes Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa) through the COVID-19 crisis and after the pandemic.

The service will be free for merchants, as Flutterwave will charge payments only. The company will also partner with logistics operators like the Sendbox in Nigeria and the Sendy in Kenya to support pickup and delivery merchants.

Small and medium-sized enterprises on the continent generate about 80 per cent of jobs in Africa, creating a rising middle class and increasing demand for new goods and services.

Most of them, however, still do not have online presences let alone online stores. Various platforms like Jumia Marketplace have helped to increase the number of online African SMEs, and for Agboola and the $55million VC-backed Flutterwave, they plan to take it a step further.