Flutterwave and Visa Launch Consumer Payment Service Getbarter in Africa

Flutterwave has partnered with Visa to launch a consumer payment product that is aimed at facilitating personal and small merchant payments in Africa called GetBarter.

Existing Visa card holders can also send and receive funds at home or internationally on GetBarter while non-card holders (people with accounts or mobile wallets on other platforms) can create a virtual Visa card to link to the app.

In a chat with TechCrunch, Flutterwave CEO, Olugbenga Agboola explained that GetBarter is more of a B2BC since they are reaching the consumers of customers while Rave will still focus on B2B. “The target market is pretty much everyone who has a payment need in Africa. That includes the entire customer base of M-Pesa, the entire bank customer base in Nigeria, mobile money and bank customers in Ghana—pretty much the entire continent,” he added.

For Flutterwave and Visa, the focus will be on building a product user base across money and bank clients in Kenya, Ghana and South Africa with plans to grow across the continent and reach the unbanked without access to financial services too. They would generate revenue through fees from financial institutions on cards created and on fees per transaction. According to Agboola, a GetBarter charge for a payment in Nigeria is roughly 40 naira or 11 cents.

With Headquarters in San Francisco (Largest operations center in Nigeria), Flutterwave plans to add operation centers in South Africa and Cameroon, which will also become new markets for GetBarter. This looks like a great step for the company that has raised $20 million from investors including Greycroft, Green Visor Capital, Mastercard, and Visa. In 2018, Flutterwave was one of several African fintech companies to announce significant VC investment and cross-border expansion

Users can download the app for Apple and Android devices and for use on WhatsApp and USSD.