So in August, about eight weeks after Andela raised $24 million in a funding round led by Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Quartz Africa broke the news that Iyinoluwa Aboyeji was leaving Andela to start Flutterwave – a digital payments infrastructure platform that aggregates various payment methods for merchants, banks, and money transfer operators across Africa.
Well, just a few hours ago, Flutterwave launched Moneywave – an omnichannel platform for payments as a service across Africa. According to Devin Coldewey a contributor on TechCrunch, Moneywave wants to empower individuals and small merchants to take part in the thriving digital economy by letting them accept payment however it’s offered, and receive it instantly in whatever form they choose.
Apparently one major recurring issue, is that there has always been many challenges surrounding online payments in Africa. Inability to process international cards and lack of support for recurring payments are some the common challenges that seem to have been solved with the likes of Paystack, Amplify, SimplePay and many others. However, one major problem that has still existed is the limited interoperability of the various payment instruments and channels we have in Africa.
Moneywave provides an API layer that can be integrated into various business models and platforms. Developers can build fully customisable money transfer platforms, online banking, mobile banking or other AI solutions. The API could also be integrated into regular business applications such as Payroll, POS and invoicing applications.
Moneywave is indeed a robust payment API and we can only wait to see how it is creatively used by the developer community.
