Iyin Aboyeji’s newest venture, Flutterwave has spread its tentacles to East Africa. The payments platform can now process cards denominated in Kenyan Shillings and US Dollars, with support for M-Pesa payments. This means Flutterwave clients in Kenya will be able to send and receive money into any bank account (in Kenya) using Visa, Mastercard and M-Pesa.
Flutterwave’s partnered with Kenya’s KCB Bank to make this happen, and their first client is The Ticket Fairy, a YC-backed company that sells event tickets via card and M-Pesa payments. Right now, Flutterwave is rolling out APIs to a few Kenyan clients, and PaywithCapture (a Nigerian mobile payment app by Access Bank) is building a standalone web app for money transfer to Kenya on it.
Kenya is Flutterwave’s first East African country, and they’re working on expanding in that market – the partnership with KCB Bank covers all their groups in East Africa. Flutterwave is currently fully functional (clients can send and receive payments) in 3 african countries – Nigeria, Ghana and now Kenya. The plan is to expand in 9 more countries before the end of the year.
Flutterwave launching in Kenya is not just good news for Kenyan firms, but for Nigerian firms that have business prospects over there. Scratch that. For firms across the world that have business prospects in East Africa. These firms can now receive local payments without any hassle (talk about bridging the East – West Africa payments gap).
For this launch, Flutterwave is open to taking one (or two) Nigerian firms to integrate at zero price for two straight months (it’ll be subject to a maximum, though). Interested co-founders should head over to Radar to say what they could do if they could do business in Nigeria and Kenya.
Flutterwave will rollout their Kenya API on October 1, 2016.
