The series of unfortunate events that characterized 2020, has had devastating effects on businesses and individuals around the world, leaving everyone overwhelmed. Notwithstanding, Flutterwave, Africa’s fast rising Payment Technology Company has stood with its community; rolling out innovative products, embarking on thoughtful initiatives and entering strategic collaborations to help them survive 2020 and come out stronger in the new year.
2020, a highly anticipated year that started with high hopes, was abruptly interrupted by a series of catastrophic events, of which Covid-19 was most prominent. This led many businesses and individuals to struggle with little or no support.
Flutterwave, a Payments Technology Company that has over 200,000 businesses trusting it with their business growth, is one of the brands that stepped up to offer a helping hand to businesses and individuals facing the harsh reality of 2020. The brand rolled out solutions to keep small businesses afloat, entered partnerships to provide more leverage for its community and powered several initiatives, all with the aim of ensuring businesses and individuals are well equipped to survive the tragedies of 2020.
With the imposition of lockdowns across various cities in the African continent and the world, businesses, especially small businesses were negatively affected. The restriction of movement meant most business owners and workers could not run their businesses, hence a disruption in their income. To help solve this, Flutterwave introduced the Flutterwave Store. The Flutterwave store provided an avenue for businesses to upload their products and start selling online while delivering a seamless shopping experience to their customers. The Flutterwave store eliminated the cumbersome delivery set up and payment processing for its users, as Flutterwave helped businesses owners in handling these issues.
The Flutterwave store is arguably one of the success stories of 2020 for the brand and its users; The Store enjoyed a warm reception from users, recording immediate growth from 1,000 users in May to 5,000 in July and 17,000 in November and over 20,000 transacting businesses, presently. The success story of the Flutterwave store is also reflected in the success of the businesses utilizing it to stay afloat. Several businesses have made huge sales on the store–recently Funkycollectionz a small business on the Flutterwave store sold 1000 bags in 3 days. This is in addition to other businesses making daily sales and generating a steady flow of income from the comfort of their homes.
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Payments collections is another aspect Flutterwave significantly played a role to help its community in 2020. Through innovative solutions like the Flutterwave Donation links and Checkouts, the brand made receiving of payments seamless for businesses and individuals. These tools came in handy especially during the thick of the pandemic and the wave of social actions and disruptions experienced in 2020.
The Flutterwave Checkout has helped businesses to efficiently go digital – for instance, Medplus a wholesale and retail pharmacy in Nigeria used Flutterwave’s Checkout to carry out their digital transformation during the pandemic. This meant that Medplus could serve their customers efficiently without exposing them to the risks of in-store shopping during a pandemic.
The Flutterwave Donation link on the other hand, has become a favourite for millennials and has become a prominent crowdfunding tool for people needing financial support. It is safe to say that the Flutterwave Donation link has become a symbol for selflessness and unity, as this tool has helped many well-meaning individuals and businesses donate to several causes, they feel is worthy of support.
Asides introducing and maintaining innovative products that helped businesses and individuals navigate through the challenges of 2020, the brand also engaged in several charitable acts, supporting small businesses and the tech community. In Nigeria, Flutterwave donated the sum 5 Million Naira to the Small Business Fund, to help rebuild looted and vandalised businesses. The brand also set aside $5,000 worth of cloud hosting each for tech-enabled SME or Start-up affected by the Pandemic and unrest.
The Flutterwave brand also explored several strategic partnerships and collaborations to further boost its services and provide more leverage for its users. In January 2020, the brand partnered with WorldPay and Netflix to enable any Worldpay merchant in Europe or the U.S to accept African payments. Flutterwave also partnered with Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba’s Alipay to offer digital payments between Africa and China. The brand also joined forces with Paga to expand payment solutions in Nigeria and across the African continent.
To further facilitate business growth, Flutterwave collaborated with Google to host a digital marketing workshop for small-medium businesses. Other community-focused strategic partnerships by Flutterwave include the ones with Ecobank and VISA.
For the Flutterwave Brand, the year 2020 was about being there for its community, facilitating growth and ensuring everyone is carried along despite the struggles faced. These acts are what have earned the brand the recognition as a “Small Business Hero”.
According to Olugbenga Agboola the Founder and CEO of Flutterwave, the brand understands the struggles of small businesses and individuals in these trying times and “we are in a perfect position to stretch out a helping hand. That is what we have done with the kind of solutions we have rolled out, our collaborations and partnerships as well the initiatives we are pushing. We do this with the hope that everyone survives 2020 and enters the new year with renewed hope and the assurance that together we are a formidable force that can stand tough times.”
Flutterwave is also using its platforms, initiatives, and solutions to demonstrate the formidable power of community, emphasizing the belief that we are stronger together. This has been proven in the past year of 2020, and the brand has shown great commitments to carry this philosophy into the year 2021 and beyond.
Founded in 2016, Flutterwave enables its customers to build customizable payment applications through its APIs. Kwame in Ghana should be able to send and receive funds to Peter in Kenya, Mohammed in Algeria, Ayo in Nigeria, Aisha in Senegal etc. Infact, Kwame should be limitless and that is what Flutterwave seeks to achieve.
Flutterwave has processed over $8 billion in transaction value since 2016. Existing customers include Uber, Booking.com, Wakanow, Flywire etc. The company has an active presence in 15 (fifteen) African countries, including Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa.
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