Flocash and Visa Partner to Promote Digital Capabilities for African SMEs

Digital payment company, Visa, has partnered with Africa’s Fintech company, Flocash to digital capabilities for African SMEs through digital payments, supplier solutions, and access to financial services. 

The partnership for a start will give rise to the launch of Flostore, powered by a Visa digital wallet and the Flocash pan -African payment platform, which can help small businesses accept digital payments, manage supplies and access financial services across Africa.

In addition to Flostore, Flocash and Visa will work together to embed financing in payments and bring the element of analytics, bookkeeping and reconciliation to small businesses through Visa’s dynamic underwriting capabilities that include buy now pay later structures.

“Visa is committed to expanding the digitization of payments across Africa. With partners like Flocash, our goal is to enable African businesses to access our payments ecosystem and technologies to enable them to innovatively and efficiently serve their customers. This partnership with Flocash, as well as the launch of Flostore, is an important step towards achieving this goal,” said Corine Mbiaketcha, Vice President and General Manager for East Africa at Visa.

“Flocash has grown significantly as a travel payments processor over the last few years, and we are thrilled to partner with them to build innovative payments solutions that reduce friction in commerce for merchants in East Africa,” Mbiaketcha added.

Flostore Tap2phone capabilities enable small businesses to turn their existing mobile devices into payment acceptance terminals. Tap2phone is an essential and cost-effective mechanism for developing digital payment infrastructure in developing markets.

“Visa is a great partner to scale Flocash’s pan-African payment platform and develop this critical area of African commerce that can offer enormous continent-wide economic development opportunities,” said Sirak Mussie, Managing Director of Flocash.

SMEs account for 90% of all businesses in Africa but have an annual financing gap of over US $136 billion according to IFC. A digitized SME sector will unlock the huge market potential of the African continent underpinned by rapid population growth.