Flutterwave expands Africa-China trade through Alipay partnership

A payments technology platform, Flutterwave, has announced its partnership with Alipay of China, thereby opening up Africa’s market to Chinese buyers.

The partnership enables Flutterwave, a Nigerian-founded B2B payments service primarily for companies in Africa, to accept payment from customers on the continent and abroad and leverage Alipay’s global network of more than one billion active users, per Alibaba’s latest earnings report.

With a large portion of Alipay’s network situated in China, the shrewd move will see Flutterwave capture payment activity around an estimated $200 billion in China-Africa trade, which Flutterwave CEO, Olugbenga Agboola, said will mean that, “All our merchants can accept Alipay as a payment method.”

Commenting further on this initiative, Agboola said: “This isn’t an unprecedented move. The answer to why we’re opening up Africa to the Chinese buyers lies in what we have set out to do since inception.