Flutterwave to cease Barter

Back in February 2023, Flutterwave underscored its efforts to reimagine Barter to become a platform servicing payment and money transfer requirements. To achieve this, the company was set to pause some services to improve its value proposition, with it being committed to focusing on refining Barter, enhancing its user experience, and ensuring increased levels of security and customer service. Additionally, Barter was also in the process of developing partnerships with different industry participants to offer users access to multiple features to allow them to have an overall better experience.

Furthermore, currently, Flutterwave plans to focus on remittance and enterprise operations, as, in October 2023, the company underlined that its enterprise services were the largest revenue driver. In contrast, Barter accounted for approximately 1% of the company’s USD 2 billion-worth transactions, as detailed by officials in 2018. However, retail maintains its position as an important part of Flutterwave, even if the company’s immediate focus is optimising services for businesses and remittance solutions. Flutterwave’s remittance products, Send and Swap, intend to bring a significant market share in Africa’s remittance market, even if, at the moment, the progress made is unclear.

Since its launch in 2017, Barter represented a flagship product among early tech startups facilitating international payments for Nigerians. Yet, the product faced several difficulties, including extended downtime in 2022 due to updates from Union54, its card-issuing partner, which faced a USD 1.2 billion fraud attempt.

As a payment technology firm that was created to allow businesses and companies to expand their capabilities and offerings securely and efficiently, Flutterwave recently announced several developments, including partnerships and additional licences, covering several different geographic areas globally. For example, Flutterwave declared at the beginning of December 2023 that it secured 13 money transmission licences in the US to optimise the process of transferring funds between Africa and the US for its customers. The company was set to focus on offering customers and clients a faster, more secure, and more affordable transfer of money from the US to Africa, and back, with the list including states like Arizona, Arkansas, Maryland, Michigan, Delaware, Georgia, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, Iowa, North Dakota, and South Dakota. The money transfer licences were issued by state regulators to enable the company to engage in the process of money transmission.

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