Wizkid and Flutterwave launch innovative global cross-border payments platform
Founded in 2016 by a team of African finance and technology veterans from Standard Bank, Angela, PayPal, Google Wallet amongst others. Flutterwave is Africa's leading payments technology company and is one of the fastest growing payments companies in the world.
It helps businesses all over the world expand their operations in Africa and other emerging markets, through a platform that enables cross-border transactions via one application programming interface (API). Flutterwave has processed over 140m transactions worth over USD $9bn to date and serves more than 300,000 businesses including customers like Uber, Flywire and Booking.com.
The company's key advantage is international payment processing in 150 currencies and multiple payment modes including local and international cards, mobile wallets, and bank transfers and Barter by Flutterwave.
Flutterwave has an infrastructure reach in over 34 African countries, including Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa.
New payment-service launch
Now in a first partnership of its kind, Wizkid has teamed with Flutterwave to launch Send to users, as a new way to send money to all parts of the world. Send is a quick, reliable and secure cross-border person-to-person payments service that allows its users to send money to local bank accounts, cash pickups and mobile wallets regardless of their geographical location using a smartphone, tablet or computer.
With Send, users can send money to and from 29 countries of the world, including the UK, US, South Africa, Kenya and the EU.
Wizkid and GB met up in Los Angeles to discuss the partnership and what it means for both brands.
In the interview, Wizkid asked GB why Flutterwave chose him, and GB replied: “Before now, I was listening to your music, and I just noticed the growth is crazy. Looking at that ascension, that growth, I identify with that. How do we keep on innovating on the last thing we did and continue that way? That is the Wizkid answer.”
Replying to GB’s question on why he agreed to collaborate with Flutterwave, Wizkid said, “Flutterwave is an African company, a quality company that caters to everyday payments problems that we face. Every payment needs to be faced back home. For me, Flutterwave is easy, simple and you’re able to send money everywhere.”
GB remarked: “We want to push Send. We want everybody in Africa, everybody in the US, UK, Canada, anywhere you are in the world to be able to send money through our platform, making it easy for a small business in Africa to receive money and payments from anywhere in the world.”
Flutterwave believes in collaboration, and so, when GB asked Wizkid why he partnered with Justin Bieber on the hit single Essence, the artiste replied: “We had a mutual friend, and we sent the song to Bieber and he sent it back almost immediately. When he sent it and I saw how good it was, we decided to put it out. I don't care who you are, once it's good, we put it out.”
