Africa’s Standard Bank partners with Flutterwave

Standard Bank, Africa’s largest bank by assets, has partnered with African payments technology company Flutterwave to improve the digital payments experience for its customers in eight African countries.

The collaboration will see Flutterwave and Standard Bank build e-commerce, card issuing, payments, collections, USSD, lending, and buy-now-pay-later capabilities for the bank’s customers in Nigeria, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, Ghana, Mauritius, Cote D’Ivoire and Malawi.

Standard Bank said that the integration will enable its customers, including individuals, SMEs, large companies and institutions, to grow their businesses using digital payments and e-commerce.

“Our partnership with Standard Bank demonstrates that fintechs and banks are not competitors but trusted partners, with the key focus being the customer,” said Olugbenga GB Agboola, founder and CEO of Flutterwave.

“We plan to grow financial and digital inclusion through this partnership and, in the long run, we expect to generate more jobs in the digital economy and enable rapid business growth across the continent.”

Standard Bank highlighted data from Statista showing that a shift to digital payments accounted for 33% of all Covid-19 responses by governments and the private sector of Sub-Saharan African countries in 2020.

Margaret Nienaber, CEO of client solutions at Standard Bank, added: “Today’s announcement is an important step in Standard Bank’s platform journey expanding from our leadership position in traditional financial services, to meet clients on the digital platforms where they are shopping, socialising and doing business.

“Partnerships with innovative fintechs like Flutterwave underpin our strategy by integrating our scale and expertise across the African continent with the services and offerings of our partners to offer an expanded range of solutions, delivered in a seamless manner to our clients.”