Afrigather Flutterwave, Africa’s greatest startup, is shutting down Barter, a digital card service it launched in 2017, because it focuses on its enterprise and remittance enterprise segments. The fintech instructed prospects to withdraw their cash within the app over the previous month.
“The choice to sundown Barter was based mostly on a complete evaluation of market developments and evolving buyer wants,” the fintech shared in a mail with TechCabal.
Flutterwave is doubling down on confirmed winners by specializing in remittance and enterprise. In October, the fintech instructed TechCabal enterprise services was its biggest revenue driver. As compared, Barter solely accounted for about 1% of the corporate’s $2 billion-worth transactions, one of many firm’s cofounders instructed Quartz Africa in 2018.
“Whereas retail stays vital to us, our speedy focus is optimizing companies for companies and remittance options,” the corporate mentioned.
In the meantime, Flutterwave’s remittance merchandise, Ship and Swap, purpose to seize a major market share in Africa’s $54 billion remittance market. It’s unclear how a lot progress each merchandise have made.
Learn additionally: Flutterwave’s new product Swap wants to solve Nigeria’s FX problems
Barter is a storied product. When it launched in 2017, it was one of many first tech startups to supply Nigerians the flexibility to make worldwide funds.
“Barter will leverage on Flutterwave’s digital card API and platform to permit customers create a vast variety of digital greenback playing cards for single or repeat transactions,” mentioned a TechCabal Daily asserting its launch in March 2017. However the product has seen its share of troubles.
In 2022, Barter was unavailable for weeks due to “an replace from the corporate’s card associate.”That associate was Union54, the Zambian card issuer that bought hit with a $1.2 billion chargeback fraud try.
Prospects additionally complained about downtime points with the platform and card rejections by retailers, together with Netflix, Fb, PayPal and Apple Music.
Learn additionally: Flutterwave appoints Olajumoke Adenowo as board member as fintech giant pursues international expansion
