More deets below!

Do you remember hearing your parents talk about paying your foreign schools fees? Or hearing your Aunty complain about how she had to use cash to pay her medical bills when she went abroad for a check-up? If you do then you know how expensive and tedious it is to send money from a Nigerian bank account to a foreign account.

Now that you’re all grown up and making your plenty money, your nephew is calling you to pay for his summer coding class in MIT and your Aunty is asking you to change money for her before she travels for her checkup. Double wahala. Imagine if you could just go online and use your Naira debit card to pay for both your nephew’s foreign school fees and your aunty’s medical bills. No more wahala.

Today, we’re excited to announce our recent partnership with Flywire to make it easier for Nigerians to pay for international school fees and medical bills using their local cards and bank accounts.

Flywire makes it super easy for international students and patients to pay their tuition and medical bills to universities and healthcare providers around the world. Flywire currently allows students and patients in over 95 countries pay for their bills in their local currency. By leveraging on our technology to expand into Nigeria, Nigerian students and patients can use their local bank accounts and local Visa, Mastercard and Verve cards to pay their bills on Flywire’s platform.

How It Works for Foreign School Fees:

1. Visit Flywire’s website to sign up or log into your account

2. Search for your desired school

3. Choose Nigeria as the country you are paying from

P.S: The great part of Flywire’s integration with Rave is that your total amount shows up in Naira so you know exactly what you will be charged.

4. Choose to pay with your local card or select bank account

5. Confirm your bank account and card details and you’re all set to go.

With our partnership with Flywire, it is now easy for Nigerians to pay for their education bills from over 1,200 universities globally using their local cards, bank accounts, and mobile money.

Flywire and Flutterwave’s partnership is live in Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana with plans to expand into more African countries in the near future.

In case you do not know who we are:

Flutterwave is a payment technology company focused on helping banks and businesses provide seamless and secure payment experiences for their customers

Our award-winning payments infrastructure enables banks, payments companies, and businesses to:

• Accept any payment method from customers around the world online or in-store with Rave.
• Make payments to anyone around the world with Moneywave.
• Issue and manage virtual and physical cards for retail, loyalty and expense management via Barter.

Our payments infrastructure is accessible via USSD, Mobile, Point of Sale and Web channels.

Kiki Kamanu, a growing fashion label founded by Kiki, a designer with strong roots in Nigeria and the United States, wanted an ecommerce solution to provide their local and international customers with a more convenient way to order stylish clothing online. More importantly, they wanted to still be able to use their existing Rave payment integrations so they could manage all their transactions and customer databases on a single dashboard.

As part of our promise to help African businesses scale globally, we partnered with Shopify to bring — an internationally recognized fashion label- Kiki Kamanu into the ecommerce game.

Since 2012, Shopify has been on a mission to make ecommerce better for everyone. Their platform allows business owners focus on selling great products, their customers can buy online with ease. Today, Shopify powers over 500,000 businesses across different industries like electronics, jewelry, clothing and books.

“As a brand with clients from all over the world, Rave provided a unique and distinctive payment processing solution that seamlessly accepted both local and offshore payment in the respective transaction currencies. We had struggled with this issue on our shop.kikikamanu.com ecommerce site prior to finding Rave. Other options did not offer a satisfactory solution to address our operational requirement.

Upon selecting Rave, we found the Flutterwave team to be both responsive and efficient to addressing all our concerns and working tirelessly to continually meet our expectations. We’re pleased to have truly world-class partner in jointly serving our stylish and discerning global Kiki Kamanu clientele.” — Kiki Kamanu

With Rave as a payment option, Kiki Kamanu customers can order the clothes online and pay using their Naira or international debit and credit cards. Their customers in Nigeria can also pay using select verified Nigerian bank accounts. We’re excited to help grow Kiki Kamanus’ online customer base by leveraging this special partnership between Rave and Shopify.

Curious about how you can integrate Shopify to your Rave account? Well, it’s pretty easy with the following steps:

If you do not have a Rave account:

• Visit Rave’s website
• Create a free account in less than 5 minutes
• You can sign up as an Individual or a Registered business

Now that you’re all signed up on Rave, you’re almost ready to start collecting payments on your Shopify store.

• On the left side of your dashboard, go to ‘Settings’
• Click on the ‘API’ tab
• Copy and paste your Public and Secret keys into a safe place
• Follow this link to sign into your Shopify account
• Choose Rave by Flutterwave as your payment gateway

• Enter your Public and Secret keys

• Start selling :)

If you do not have a Shopify store, it’s super easy to create one from the comfort of your home. We found a super helpful guide to creating your first Shopify store. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been selling for a month or for a year, you can run and manage your own Shopify store. And with Rave as a payment option, you can scale your business both locally and internationally.

If you have any questions about integrating Rave into your Shopify store, please send us an email at hi@flutterwavego.com. Happy selling!

Then gbam! Love happens.

And now with Valentine’s Day just a day away, you’re probably wondering how your wallet will help you get a gift or two for your bae. Fear not! Your compulsory prayer and fasting has inspired us to save you lover boys and girls.

Introducing Flutterwave Rewards Platform : Pay Less with Rave

Starting this week until March 12th, we’ve partnered up with some of Nigeria’s biggest merchants** and your bank to offer you a 10% discount when you pay with the Rave payment option using your Visa, Mastercard or Verve Card.

How awesome is that?

We’ve curated a list of some of our Rave merchants who have great deals happening this Valentine’s Day period. If you love a good getaway, head over to Hotels.ng to book a spacious hotel room or visit Wakanow and book a flight to a new destination this week — we hear the weather is beautiful in Accra right now.

But if you don’t want to fly too faraway and are in the mood for a short trip, you and a loved one can fly to and from Nigeria with Arikair this weekend.

Not in the mood to fly? Did you know that Chisco Transport recently launched their newly revamped website? You can now buy your bus ticket online using your Naira debit card or bank account. Don’t forget to pay with Rave to enjoy our special discount.

You can treat your loved one to a new fragrance on Payporte’s site — with so many options, you’re bound to find the perfect scent.

With so many merchants to choose from, you can enjoy the month of love without breaking the bank.

Learn more about our promo here, and if you’ve been enjoying the discounts this week, tweet at us (theflutterwave) using this hashtag #FlutterwaveLove and we’ll be sure to send you a heart back :)
Contact us: hi@flutterwavego.com

**Participating merchants: Uber, OgaTaxi, GUO Transport, Chisco Transport, GIG Motors, Dana Air, Airpeace, Arik Air, Medview, PayPorte, and Hotels.ng.

In case you do not know who we are:

Flutterwave is a payment technology company focused on helping banks and businesses provide seamless and secure payment experiences for their customers

Our award-winning payments infrastructure enables banks, payments companies, and businesses to:

• Accept any payment method from customers around the world online or in-store with Rave.
• Make payments to anyone around the world with Moneywave.
• Issue and manage virtual and physical cards for retail, loyalty and expense management via Barter.

Our payments infrastructure is accessible via USSD, Mobile, Point of Sale and Web channels.

When we first designed Rave, we built it for large corporate clients and registered businesses with CAC documents — but then we learnt the hard way that some of our favorite merchants were the creatives, freelancers, dope dancers and consultants. The so-called “one man businesses”. Rave couldn’t work for them because it required them to be registered businesses which meant they had to deal with receiving bank transfers from their customers at random times during the day.

Today, we are excited to launch Individual Accounts on Rave.

The Individual Account is perfect for you — the typical solo entrepreneur doing your thing at home or on the side — freelancers, creatives, consultants, dancers, fashion designers, you naaaaame it. You can now sign up on Rave as an individual in your name.

We are super excited about Individual Accounts for a few reasons:

→ First, we know side hustles and one man businesses live on social media — Instagram slays, Aggressive facebook posts, and “my customer might be on your TL” tweets. You want to get paid online and Individual Accounts got you covered.

→ Next up, with Individual Accounts on Rave, not only will you find prospective customers on social media, but you can also collect payments using Rave’s shareable payment link feature!

→ Also, because your customers are used to sending you money using their phones, tablets or computers, they’re pretty much used to mobile payments.

→ Lastly, we can finally leave all the “DM me your account number” tweets and messages in 2017.

Creating a payment link is easy:

Sign up on rave.flutterwave.com and verify your Rave account

Click the “collect payments” button on your dashboard

Select ‘Create payment page’

Select ‘Single charge’

Give your Payment Page a cool and unique name

And you’re good to go!

Iyinoluwa Aboyeji on Twitter

'My business will go global in 2018' doesn't need to be just another unanswered prayer if you get on the Rave wave. Sign up today on https://t.co/ceSHkATbiV to start accepting any kind of payment, anywhere from across Africa and around the world. @theflutterwave #prosper

What is really cool about individual accounts on Rave is that it brings us closer to the world we imagined when we dreamed up the wave.

You see, at Flutterwave, we believe that as the digital economy becomes the new global economy, anyone — not just the heavily financed multinational with a gazillion staff — will be able build a global business from their bedroom. With an Individual Account on Rave, you can finally build that multinational from the comfort of your sofa. Isn’t that awesome?

We would love to hear from you. Tweet at us on @theflutterwave with hashtag #rave to let us know what you think about this new feature.

And if you haven’t signed up yet — DO IT NOW.

Grow!!

— Koromone.

Victor Asemota on Twitter

Maybe the new @theflutterwave slogan for 2018 will be "Making the impossible possible" The quest for zero transaction failures. cc: @iaboyeji. Nothing is impossible.

Impossible [im-pos-uh-buh]

Adjective. Defined as: [something that is] unable to be done, performed, effected…

We’re not going to lie, we didn’t get through 2017 thinking that nothing was impossible. We had our fair share of lows and challenges but when you work with a team of brilliant product managers, engineers, software developers, writers, creatives and builders, it’s impossible to stay down for too long. At Flutterwave, we let impossible ideas challenge and push us to think outside the box.

PARTNERSHIPS
→ Transferwise re-entered the remittance market and we supported their re-entry as a technology partner. They use our technology to make payouts into verified Nigerian bank accounts.

OUR NUMBERS:

PRODUCT JAM SESSIONS
Rave, our merchant acquiring product, got a facelift. Finally.

After a full year of being fully functional and serving most of our Enterprise customers like Arik Air, ALAT, and more recently, the GTB SME Markethub platform, it was time to spruce things up.

We held customer focus groups, sprints, workshops, and meetings.
We ran tests.
We drank endless cups of coffees.
We built Rave V2.

You can check out the new rave at rave.flutterwave.com and send us suggestions on how we can further improve it at hi@flutterwavego.com

It wasn’t easy to reconcile the perspectives of different categories of customers and developers often with clashing views of how products should work, but it was so much fun building with our ecosystem of small and large customers.

We’re planning another jam session for one of your favorite Flutterwave products. shhhhh. We’ll share all deets at the right time.

CLOSING OUT:

On the evening of December 25th, we were at the All Black Everything [ABE] event collecting payments. Two of our team members arrived at the event with POS devices and stayed on site to offer assistance and support.

The night ended with 100% success on all the transactions we processed. Yep. Zero failed transactions. #blessed.

Tiwaworks ⬅click2fol on Twitter

@dupsyturvy @theflutterwave I LOVED how @theflutterwave @dupsyturvy valued my needs as a new client from day one. Their service is top notch and went over and beyond expectations to service our needs for payment processing with @ABELagos ! 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 thank you!!

ABE’s success really set the tone for how we intend to serve businesses in this new year. 2018 is the year we go above and beyond for customers by doing our best to ensure every payment goes through 100%.

2018: Here’s to YOU & your customers
Beyond achieving the impossible, we want 2018 to be all about you and your customers.
As we face an incredible New Year together, we are here to help make your dreams possible by taking on the impossible:

→ Payments infrastructure with fewer failed transactions, even when everyone else is down.
→ International payments without the rain of chargebacks. Going global at the click of a button.
→ 24/7 customer care for you and for your customers.
→ Offer lower fees and customer discounts that don’t eat into your profits.

Somto Ifezue on Twitter

@PiggyBankNG Special shout-out to the @theflutterwave team for their support yesterday. They were literally in our office yesterday to ensure that most withdrawals happened smoothly ... We salute 🙌🙌

In case you do not know who we are:

Flutterwave is a payment technology company focused on helping banks and businesses provide seamless and secure payment experiences for their customers

Our award-winning payments infrastructure enables banks, payments companies, and businesses to:

• Accept any payment method from customers around the world online or in-store with Rave.
• Make payments to anyone around the world with Moneywave.
• Issue and manage virtual and physical cards for retail, loyalty and expense management via Barter.

Our payments infrastructure is accessible via USSD, Mobile, Point of Sale and Web channels.

If you want to learn more about us (of course you do), tweet at us or send an email to hi@flutterwavego.com

READING LIST:

As an added bonus, Here’s a special recommendation of books we’ve read in 2017.

1. Lean In
2. Rework
3. PayPal Wars
4. The Everything Store
5. Alibaba — The House that Jack Ma Built
6. Four Steps to Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that win
7. Zero to One
8. Founders at Work
9. The Innovator’s Dilemma
10. The Coaching Habit

We received our first certification in 2016 and are pleased to receive a successful renewal. In the past year, we have worked hard to ensure that we adhered to the PCI DSS global standards of data protection and security. We are committed to maintaining these standards so the businesses and enterprises who use our solutions continue to process secure card transactions.

The PCI DSS Level 1 certification is awarded to organizations who process over six million credit or debit card transactions on a yearly basis. In order for us to provide solutions to merchants who want to process card payments, we know how important it is to adhere to the PCI DSS global security standards.

As a PCI DSS certified company, we want to assure our merchants and partners that their transactions and card data are stored on our secure platform. In addition, our servers are compliant to the recommended safety standards which eliminates and reduces the risk of our customers data being attacked or compromised.

This PCIDSS Level 1 renewal affirms the company’s dedication to offering secure smart card processing solutions in line with international standards. The Level 1 re-certification also covers our card issuing processing , card acquiring processing and alternative channels card processing.

We were successfully audited by Digital Jewels, an accredited assessment body authorized by the PCI Security Standards Council. The council is an open global forum, launched in 2006, and is responsible for the development, management, education, and awareness of the PCI Security Standards.

Flutterwave strives to come up with and apply innovative electronic payment solutions while maintaining high level operational standards. Our certification renewal is a testament to our strict adherence to international security standards and it has also helped us upgrade our offices in Lagos, Nigeria and San Francisco into a full-fledged processing center and payments hub. We are now able to better handle the traffic and growth of electronic payments in both regions.

progress #paypal #rave #flutterwave

Rave enables African businesses to accept any kind of payment, anywhere, across Africa and around the world. Alongside millions of customers using Mastercard, Visa, Verve, Bank Account and USSD payments to pay Rave businesses, we are now enabling over 200 million paypal users from around the world to pay businesses using Rave.

This new feature is huge for businesses using Rave to accept payments from a global customer base. Today, although many African businesses want to accept payments from around the world, international card payments are fraught with risks of chargebacks.

On one hand, customers may not trust local businesses enough to put their card details on their website; on the other hand, Paypal is trusted by millions of customers and merchants around the world. And this is why we think this feature is a game changer for any business accepting payments with Rave.

As with everything Flutterwave, we have made the payments experience super simple, and secure for both business and customer.

If you are an existing Rave customer, err you don’t have to do anything; just tell your customers they can now pay with paypal and watch the cash roll in..

If you want to give your customers more options to pay you, sign up for a free Rave account!

Most importantly this feature doesn’t come at any extra cost to your business. You can start accepting payments on rave from Paypal customers for 1.4% + N50 per transaction. We also offer volume pricing for enterprise clients. If you are interested, simply email us at customersuccess@flutterwavego.com

Flutterwave is on a mission to change how the world does business with Africa by connecting every African to the global economy. With pay with Paypal, we are one step closer to taking African businesses global.

Join our wave and start accepting payments with Rave now

PS: We’re on Twitter| Facebook | LinkedIn

TransferWise will be leveraging Flutterwave’s Pan-African payments infrastructure to send money into any verified Nigerian bank account.

Want to chat with us/tell us about your payment technology needs: Give us out a shout: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Forum | Mail: hi@flutterwavego.com

Thanks to the partnership with Flutterwave, TransferWise customers in the UK and around the world can now use their debit cards, or online banking on the TransferWise website and mobile app to send money to family and friends with verified bank accounts in Nigeria.

According to the World Bank’s Migration and Development Brief, in 2016 Nigerians in the diaspora sent $19 billion to their families and friends in Nigeria making it one of the most active remittance corridors in the world.

Flutterwave’s payments infrastructure will enable TransferWise to instantly verify recipients’ bank accounts and send funds to recipients in local currency within a day.

By re-opening this corridor; Nigerian families and communities looking to get paid from diaspora relatives, friends, business partners, and loved ones around the world, we will spur further growth in the Nigerian economy.

More importantly, TransferWise’ re-entry into the market is a huge testament to Nigeria’s miraculous economic recovery and the stellar job the Central Bank of Nigeria and the current government has done to stabilize the naira.

It can only get better!

We look forward to supporting other global money transfer players like Transferwise to scale across Africa by creatively solving technology and regulatory challenges involved with scaling their money transfer operations in Nigeria and across 36 other African countries we serve today.

So TransferWise, welcome to a Nigeria that is truly open for business.

Good luck!

PS: If you are looking for secure, seamless and compliant digital payment solutions for scaling your business across Africa, email us at hi@flutterwavego.com

Picture this:

You’re going through your monthly account statement and come across a strange line item. You don’t recognize the charge and you don’t remember making a payment to XYZ.com.

You’re certain someone got a hold of your card and used it online. You worked hard for your money so it’s only right that you demand for a full refund from the bank.

It’s not a pretty image, right?

Now imagine this scenario happening with your customer:

Imagine if a criminal uses your customer’s card to purchase a product or service you provide.

Once your customer sees the fraudulent transaction, he’s going to call his bank and file a chargeback complaint.

What is a Chargeback?

A chargeback occurs when a customer sees a transaction he does not recognize, and calls his bank to dispute the charge.

After the complaint is filed, the issuing bank runs an investigation. If the charge is fraudulent, the bank will give him a full refund.

Ouch. A full refund counts as a loss on your end.

Ultimately, the best way to avoid the losses that come with a chargeback complaint is by putting proper processes in place.

There are different types of chargebacks and with this article, we’re sharing a few ways to reduce chargeback risks:

There are multiple ways to prevent chargebacks and the list we’ve provided is not exhaustive. Our next post will focus on ways to prevent chargebacks in the Travel and Hospitality industry.

Got any questions or comments about chargebacks? Share them with us!

We’re on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Missed our last post? Catch up here.

Although I’ve only been with Flutterwave for a weeks, i’d like to share my experience so far:

I landed in Lagos in the evening and was taken to the Flutterwave office to meet up with some of my team members before heading to my hotel. I met with Modupe Durosinmi-Etti, Flutterwave’s Developer Community Manager (who by the way was a great help). She helped me get acquainted with everyone and also helped out with my hotel and transportation.

One of the first things I noticed about Flutterwave is how diverse their teams are. The company has a good balance of young men and women with different skillsets. The diversity was kind of refreshing to see if I’m being honest. I couldn’t help but make a mental note.

There’s always a level of nervousness you feel you’re in a new environment and trying to familiarise with a team that’s already works in sync. In the back of your mind, you worry a bit about fitting in.

But the Flutterwave team has been really great and I’ve had no problem with fitting in. I definitely had some great conversations and bonded with the designers while we worked.

Flutterwave not only uses Slack for work, they also created a separate Slack space for developers who are interested in integrating their APIs into online/offline products and services.

I was added to Flutterwave’s Slack after I joined the team. Apart from internal communications and work talk, there are a few channels dedicated to sharing office banter and funny videos.

The journey with Flutterwave has just begun and I’m really looking forward to what is coming next.

Thanks for reading! Did you miss our last post?

We can provide seamless and secure payment solutions for your business and customers. Contact us.

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Meet Joseph; UI/UX Designer, Flutterwave. was originally published in Outreach by Flutterwave on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.