San Francisco-based payment technology company Flutterwave has launched Market, as part of efforts to increase its market size in the ecommerce space in Africa.
Flutterwave Market is an extension of Flutterwave Store with a goal to bring together a collection of merchant stores in one place. This brings the merchants closer to their customers which ultimately helps to increase sales and revenue.
Flutterwave has been busy expanding its ecommerce footprint across Africa. Barely two weeks ago it had announced the acquisition of Disha, a platform that enables digital creators to curate, sell digital content, portfolios and receive payments from their audience worldwide. The company said the acquisition was to improve the process of digital content creation for Disha users, enabling them to earn value for their creativity using the platform’s new payouts and collections solution. Disha has acquired over 20,000 users organically over 12 months. These users are likely to be onboarded on the Flutterwave Market service.
On Flutterwave Market, customers will not only shop from a range of Flutterwave Store merchants but will also enable customers to seamlessly shop across a variety of products from different businesses at their convenience.
Flutterwave Store was launched in April 2020 with the aim of keeping the lights on for small businesses following lockdown due to Covid-19 pandemic across various countries. The ecommerce solution has grown to over 30,000 businesses till date, while adding features like discount codes and multiple product uploads.
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“This is an exciting next chapter for the Flutterwave brand, and we’re excited to introduce this new marketplace experience to our merchants worldwide,” said Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Flutterwave. “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.”
The number of digital buyers in Africa experienced an increase to 281 million, according to data from Statista. The number of ecommerce 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.
The Flutterwave Market comes with 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.
Agboola attributes the launch of Flutterwave Market to feedback from consumers who wanted 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,” Agboola said.
