The partnership will see all Flutterwave merchants in Africa accept and make payments from over 1 billion WeChat customers in China and South East Asia in real time.
Flutterwave customers in Africa will be able to settle payments they have received into their own Wechat Accounts in CNY.
Speaking on the collaboration, Wapi Pay Co-Founder Paul Ndichu said, “Wapi Pay will power all merchants who are on the Flutterwave system to credit WeChat accounts and accept payment from WeChat. This will see greater facilitation of trade between Africa and South East Asia.”
WapiPay which began operations in 2018 to connect Africa’s, China and SouthEast Asia’s payments and mobile money platforms to improve the payment experience which takes up to five days as well as reduce exchange costs to further accelerate trade between the corridors.
“We are currently working with Wechat and expect to incorporate Alipay and Chinese Bank Accounts in April 2019, as well as further move into connecting Africans to Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Vietnam and Philippines” added Mr Ndichu.
Wapi Pay is already being used by Banks and Remittance companies in East Africa with traders being the bigger users of the service.
Flutterwave provides the underlying technology platform that allows businesses to make and accept payments anywhere in Africa. Their customers are banks, enterprises and entrepreneurs.
WeChat, or Weixin as it’s known locally in China, was launched in 2011 by the Tencent conglomerate, based in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. Wechat is a fully-fledged ecosystem with over 1 billion monthly active users in China and South East Asia offering social and payment services.
Founded by a team of African ex-bankers, engineers and entrepreneurs, Flutterwave has already processed over $1.2 billion in payments across over 10 million transactions.
While it is headquartered in San Francisco, Flutterwave has offices in Lagos, Nairobi, Accra, Johannesburg and plans to expand further across the African continent in 2017.
