By Dipo Olowookere
A deal to make cross-border money transactions easier in Nigeria has been entered into between Flywire and Flutterwave.
Flywire is a provider of global payment and receivables solutions for education, healthcare, and business, while Flutterwave is a payments’ API platform that makes it easier for banks and businesses to process payments across Africa.
With the partnership, Flywire will integrate Flutterwave’s Rave payment platform as a preferred option for students, patients, and businesses in Nigeria making cross-border payments via the Flywire platform.
Nigeria is a thriving market for cross-border payments and is the number one source of international students and patients from Africa with approximately 15,000 Nigerians studying at British colleges and universities during the 2016/2017 academic year.
Another 10,000 plus studied in the US, contributing an estimated $ 301 million to the US economy.
According to the World Bank, Nigerian’s also spend $1 billion annually on medical treatment abroad and Nigeria also has a thriving global trade, exporting almost $35 billion worth of goods and services each year, and importing over $30 billion worth of goods and services each year.
Co-founder and CEO of Flutterwave, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, while commenting on the deal, stated that, “Despite the billions of dollars being invested in international education, healthcare and business goods and services by Africans every year, the payment process remains complex and slow, with too much paperwork, and costly information gaps.”
“Our partnership with Flywire makes it possible for people in Nigeria and all across Africa to make these investments more confidently and hassle-free.
“We are very proud to partner with Flywire to enable more Africans to become citizens of the world,” Aboyeji enthused.
Flywire provides businesses, educational institutions, and healthcare providers with the ability to offer their customers a highly-tailored, international payment experience – customized by country, currency and vertical.
Flutterwave provides end-to-end payments technology and infrastructure which enables payment service providers, global merchants, licensed money transfer operators and pan-African banks to process payments to and from Africa with one API integration. The solution integration is available immediately.
Also commenting, the , CEO of Flywire, Mike Massaro, stated that, “Nigeria can be a very complex foreign exchange environment.
“Together with Flutterwave, we’re removing a lot of that complexity and providing a more seamless payment experience for international students, patients, and businesses.
“Nigerians will now have the convenience of being able to make digital, cross-border payments in their local currency, through ebank transfers, credit/debit cards, and mobile payments.
“Our partnership will also streamline the reconciliation of these payments on the receiving end for schools, hospitals and businesses,” Massaro added.
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