Flutterwave, Africa’s top startup, is closing down its virtual card service, Barter, launched in 2017.
The company wants to focus more on its enterprise and remittance business. Over the past month, Flutterwave has asked its customers to withdraw their money from the app.
The decision to end Barter came after Flutterwave studied market trends and listened to customer feedback, according to a statement shared by TechCabal.
Flutterwave is now putting more effort into its successful enterprise and remittance services. Last October, the company revealed that its enterprise services were bringing in the most money. In contrast, Barter only made up about 1% of the company’s $2 billion transactions, as one of the cofounders mentioned to Quartz Africa in 2018.
“While retail remains important to us, our immediate focus is optimising services for businesses and remittance solutions,” Flutterwave stated.
At the same time, Flutterwave is pushing its remittance products, Send and Swap, to capture a big share of Africa’s $54 billion remittance market. It’s not clear how well these products are doing so far.
Barter was a big deal when it launched in 2017, offering Nigerians the chance to make international payments.
However, it has faced its fair share of problems. In 2022, the service was down for weeks because of an update from its card partner, Union54, which had been targeted in a $1.2 billion fraud attempt.
Customers have also complained about the platform’s downtime and cards being rejected by merchants like Netflix, Facebook, PayPal, and Apple Music.
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