Africa’s leading fintech, Flutterwave, has announced the onboarding of Nigeria’s Central Bank Digital Currency, eNaira, onto its platform. The payment company said merchants on its platform can now accept eNaira payments.
Flutterwave offers a series of services using different methods which include bank transfer, cards and Barter by Flutterwave. The company has been adding other payment services as it grows. Earlier, fintech announced that it has secured a Switching and Processing license from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), to offer transaction switching and card processing services to customers. Other services include agency banking and payment gateway services.
Onboarding eNaira is another bold step that will likely boost the use of the digital currency. Since it was launched last October, the CBDC has struggled to gain wide adoption. The CBN governor Godwin Emefiele said last month that the eNaira had only recorded 840,000 downloads with 270,000 active wallets comprising 252,000 consumer wallets and 17,000 merchant wallets accounting for N4 billion transactions since its launch.
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With this adoption, Flutterwave merchants can enable the eNaira payment option on their dashboard for their customers’ use.
“With our new adoption of eNaira as a payment method on Flutterwave, we’re enabling various payment methods to merchants and their customers to ensure everyone has access to payment solutions that work for them. Flutterwave will continue to strive to be at the forefront of innovation as we develop and implement new solutions to facilitate global payments for our customers,” Olugbenga GB Agboola, Founder and CEO of Flutterwave, said.
By being on Flutterwave’s platform, eNaira now stands a chance of being exposed to be adopted by more merchants and users, and Flutterwave sees an opportunity to bring thousands of eNaira users to its platform.
Flutterwave provides technology, infrastructure, and services to enable global businesses, payment service providers and Pan-African banks to accept and process payments on any channel (Web, Mobile, ATM & POS). The company currently operates across Africa, Europe, North America, and other emerging markets by providing a suite of payment tools that enable over One million businesses accept payments from their customers anywhere in the world in over 150 currencies, including the Naira and eNaira.
Recently, Flutterwave took the first step to get listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Although this has come on the heels of many hurdles, including allegations of fraud and malpractices in its key markets, the $3 billion company’s recent moves, including the acquisition of licenses from the central bank, indicate that it is not bothered.
Featuring the eNaira is Flutterwave’s latest push to expand its offering as Nigerians are increasingly adopting the digital currency.
“We’re the payment solution that strives to allow individuals and businesses with various payment needs and requirements to do business, easily. The eNaira feature is important for the merchants and customers because it offers an alternative payment method that many users find seamless. It’s a key update to Flutterwave and we continue to look out for opportunities like this to improve our offering to our range of customers,” Azeez Oluwafemi, Senior Vice President, Products and Design said.