Flutterwave, a leading digital payment company, has unveiled its e-commerce platform – Flutterwave Market, which is an extension of its Flutterwave Store service, that will bring together a collection of merchant stores in one place. Flutterwave Market brings e-commerce a step closer to the brand’s merchants and their customers.
The platform is set up to bring merchants and their customers together to help bridge the gap of distance by providing a one-stop shop for all Africans in the sale and purchase of goods. This will make it easy for customers to shop across a variety of products from different businesses at their convenience.
Hear from Flutterwave
In a blog post by Flutterwave, the Market will display Flutterwave stores across various product categories and countries. To further improve the shopping experience, it will contain features such as product search, category display, and country filter. The unveiling of this platform is also driven by statistics that show that digital marketplace buying has been on the rise in Africa.
As revealed in a 2020 Statista, the number of digital buyers in Africa experienced an increase to 281 million. The number of e-commerce users in the continent is also estimated to grow significantly, reaching over 334 million in 2021. By 2025, they could be roughly 520 million, almost doubling the number in 2019.
Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Flutterwave said, “This is an exciting next chapter for the Flutterwave brand, and we’re excited to introduce this new marketplace experience to our merchants worldwide. “Flutterwave Market is a fully functional e-commerce service that serves as a megastore where buyers can purchase a variety of goods from multiple sellers under one roof.”
Agboola adds that “Since the successful launch of Flutterwave Store, we have listened to our customers and acted on what they need to scale their businesses. Launching the new marketplace will transform their business, taking it to the next stage of growth. Flutterwave Market is for us a way to create endless possibilities for our Flutterwave Store users. We are not merely aggregating existing stores, but we are repositioning them to make more sales.”
Insight
Flutterwave Store launched in April 2020 intending to keep the lights on for small businesses that had been shut down due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Flutterwave’s e-commerce solution has grown to over 30,000 businesses and has features such as discount coupons and multiple product uploads being added. The Flutterwave Market gives customers another way to find and purchase from these businesses, rather than just following their store link.
With this move which rivals the likes of Jumia and Konga that have been in the e-commerce business for long, Flutterwave is solidifying its place as Africa’s leading payments technology company.