Flutterwave has announced a collaboration with Polygon Labs aimed at enabling instant, low-cost cross-border payments for businesses and consumers moving money in and out of Africa. The partnership, which relies on blockchain infrastructure and stablecoins, is part of Flutterwave’s broader effort to position itself not just as a payments company, but as a core piece of financial plumbing for the continent.
Under the initiative, Flutterwave will integrate Polygon’s blockchain architecture to support transfers and settlement using stablecoins such as USDC and USDT. According to the company, this will allow international money transfer operators (IMTOs), large enterprises, small and medium-sized businesses, and individuals to send and receive funds across borders in real time, bypassing some of the traditional banking frictions associated with international payments.
Today, cross-border payments into and within Africa remain slow and expensive. Settlement for institutional flows can take two to three business days. Small businesses often rely on legacy rails like SWIFT and correspondent banks, introducing delays in paying overseas suppliers. Consumers sending remittances to the continent, a corridor estimated in the tens of billions of dollars annually, frequently incur fees of 6%–10% per transfer and experience multi-day waiting times.
Flutterwave says the new infrastructure is designed to address those pain points on three fronts.
For large institutions and IMTOs, stablecoin-based settlement on the Flutterwave-Polygon channel is expected to move from “T+2/T+3” timelines to what the company describes as “T+Instant.” Faster settlement is particularly relevant to international firms operating in African markets, where currency exposure, liquidity management, and regulatory reporting can become operational bottlenecks.
For SMEs, the company frames the product as a way to operate with global responsiveness. While many African SMEs already accept payments through modern fintech platforms, outbound international payments remain a friction point. Flutterwave argues that enabling those businesses to receive and then pay out internationally using stablecoins, without multi-day clearance, can improve inventory cycles and strengthen supplier relationships.
The company is also targeting the consumer remittance segment. Africa’s diaspora sends tens of billions of dollars back to the continent each year, often through high-cost channels. Flutterwave says that using a stablecoin rail on a licensed platform can reduce both time and cost for these transfers, essentially collapsing the gap between “money sent” and “money received.”
The collaboration with Polygon Labs also reflects a broader positioning. While the plumbing relies on blockchain, Flutterwave is not marketing the rollout as a crypto product for speculation. Instead, it is presenting the effort as regulated financial infrastructure built for scale. The company describes itself as “the most-licensed non-bank financial institution in Africa,” with regulatory approvals and integrations across more than 30 African markets. That posture is notable as regulators globally are watching the use of stablecoins in mainstream payments with increased scrutiny.
Polygon Labs, for its part, has been working to position its network as a base layer for high-volume, low-cost financial activity. By plugging into that infrastructure, Flutterwave is effectively betting that stablecoins can act as neutral, programmable settlement instruments for African and Africa-linked money flows, without forcing end users to navigate the complexity of blockchain themselves.
The timeline will be gradual. Flutterwave says a pilot phase with selected enterprise customers will begin in 2025. A broader rollout is scheduled for 2026 and will include corporates, SMEs using Flutterwave for Business, and consumer remittances through the company’s Send App.
If successful at scale, the project could test a long-standing question in African fintech: can blockchain-linked payment infrastructure move from concept to core utility, not as a speculative asset class, but as the backbone for how money moves across borders? Flutterwave and Polygon are both positioning this collaboration as an attempt to answer that.
