Africa Roundup: Visa connects to M-Pesa, Flutterwave enters e-commerce

It seems the demand for Safaricom’s M-Pesa payment produce never eases. Since its 2007 launch in Kenya, the fintech app has dominated over 70% of the mobile money market in that country. When COVID-1 9 slam the East African nation of 53 million in March, the Kenyan Central Bank turned to M-Pesa as a public health tool to reduce use of cash.

And last-place month, one of the world’s financial services monstrous — Visa — connected M-Pesa to its global network.

Visa and Safaricom — which is Kenya’s largest telecom and motorist of M-Pesa — announced such partnerships on pays and tech.

The arrangement opens up M-Pesa’sown substantial financial services network in East Africa to Visa’s global merchant and placard structure across 200 countries.

The corporations will too collaborate “on development of concoctions that will support digital payments for M-Pesa purchasers .” The partnership is still subject to regulatory approval.

The items remain vague, but the payment providers also said they will use the collaboration to facilitate e-commerce.

Images Recognitions: Getty Images

On a continent that is still home to the largest share of the world’s unbanked population, Kenya has one of the highest mobile-money penetration rates in the world. This is largely due to the dominance of M-Pesain the country, which has 24. 5 million customers and a structure of 176,000 agents.

As we detailed in ExtraCrunch, Visa has been on a VC and partnership rampage with African fintech companies. The world financial services giant has referred working with the continent’s payments startups as core to its Africa expansion strategy.

Visa and Kenya’s Safaricom partner on M-Pesa, remittances and tech

One of those fintech endeavours Visa has teamed up with, Flutterwave, propelled an e-commerce product in April. The San Francisco and Lagos-based B2B payments companionship announced Flutterwave Store, a portal for African shopkeepers to create digital browses to sell online.

The product is less Amazon and more eBay — with no inventory or warehouse requirements. Flutterwave demands the move doesn’t represent any change away from its core payments business.

The company accelerated the development of Flutterwave Store in response to COVID-1 9, which brought along restrictive measures to SMEs and brokers operating in Africa’s largest economies.

After creating a profile, users can showcase inventory and link up to a payment option. For pickup and transmission, Flutterwave Store controls through existing third party logistics providers, such as Sendy in Kenya and Sendbox in Nigeria.

The service will start in 15 African countries and the only costs Flutterwave will blame( for now) are on remittances. Otherwise, it’s free for SMEs to create an online storefront and for buyers and sellers to transact goods.

While the initiative is born out of the spread of coronavirus bags in Africa, it will be pursued beyond the pandemic. And Flutterwave’s CEO Olugbenga Agboola — aka GB — is adamant Flutterwave Store is not a rotate for the Y-Cominator backed fintech 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 told TechCrunch.

African fintech firm Flutterwave launches SME e-commerce portal

In early stage startup activity, a relatively new company — Okra — has created a distinct scaffold that would enable us to generate revenue on both sides of the fintech aisle.

Founded in June 2019 by Nigerians Fara Ashiru Jituboh and David Peterside, the company refers to itself as a “super-connector API” with a platform that relation bank account to third party applications.

Okra’s consumers include fintech startups and vast financial institutions in Nigeria. The corporation got the attention of TLcom Capital — a $71 million Africa focused VC firm — that backed Okra with$ 1 million in pre-seed funding. The Nigerian startup is using the funds to hire and expand to new markets in Africa, most likely Kenya.

Nigeria’s Okra promotes$ 1M from TLcom connecting bank account to apps