Flutterwave, one of Africa’s largest payments companies, has tapped Polygon Labs to make cross-border payments faster and cheaper with blockchain rails, the companies said Thursday.
The tie-up will embed the polygon network (POL) as the default plumbing under the new, StableCoin-based payment system, according to a press release shared with Coindesk.
The first phase of the rollout, starting later this year, will focus on multinational enterprise clients including Uber and Audiomack. A wider release is planned for next year, expanding Flutterwave’s Send app service for retail remittances.
Today, cross-border payments in many African countries are slow and costly, with fees reaching 8%, the companies said. A day of waiting in business for funds to clear can mean losing access to working capital or missing out on growth opportunities.
StableCoins, a group of cryptocurrencies tied to fiat money like the US dollar, aims to offer a cheaper, faster alternative to traditional payment rails by routing transactions onchain, through banks. StableCoins have grown into a $300 billion asset class and are increasingly popular in emerging countries for everyday payments and savings.
“Businesses in emerging economies process billions of cross-border payments annually, but still face high costs and slow settlement times,” Olugbenga Agboola, founder and CEO of Flutterwave, said in a statement. “By partnering with Polygon, we’re introducing a solution that makes international payments even simpler and more affordable than many local ones.”
With this move, Flutterwave joins a growing list of financial players who are betting on StableCoins on the blockchain to solve long-standing payment bottlenecks. For example, Western Union, a ubiquitous global money transfer network, only announced it will issue its own stablecoin in Solana Blockchain with US Crypto Bank Anchorage Digital next year. Launched by PayPal (PYPL) developing itself Blockchain and StableCoin Infrastructure.
