Africa’s leading payment company, Flutterwave recently announced the launch of its new e-commerce service, Flutterwave Market. The newly launched e-commerce service is “an extension of its Flutterwave Store service – that will bring together a collection of merchant stores in one place”.
Flutterwave market was launched with the goal of helping merchants increase their sales and revenue, and also onboard new customers. This new development will enable customers to have a seamless shopping experience from a wide range of different products and services offered by merchants on the Flutterwave store.
According to the payment company, “the Flutterwave Market will display Flutterwave stores across various product categories and countries. It will include features such as product search, category display and country filter to help enhance the shopping experience.
“The solution will display product categories such as men and women’s fashion, beauty, and food—in line with the preferences of most shoppers on Flutterwave Store. Shoppers will be able to order products and have the products delivered at their preferred locations”.
Flutterwave store was launched at the peak of COVID-19 in April 2020, to help small businesses set up online shops following the nationwide lockdown. Since its launch, the online store has seen over 30,000 businesses registered on its portal and also added features like discount codes and multiple product uploads.
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.”
GB continued: “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’re not merely aggregating existing stores, we’re positioning them to make more sales.”
Recent data from Statista shows that as of 2020, 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.
