Flutterwave, a successful fintech company, has announced that it is closing down its form of payment known as Barter. The service was launched in 2017 as a virtual card service to aid payments. This news came shortly after the temporary shutdown of Disha.
Flutterwave has decided to focus more on its enterprise and remittance business sections. It advised its customers to withdraw all their money from the platform.
Flutterwave Closes Down Barter
The platform’s virtual cards were shut down previously in 2022, followed by more than a year of inactivity, which was caused by an update from the company’s card partner. Union54, a card issuer in Zambia was the target of a $1.2 billion chargeback fraud attempt. After these issues, Flutterwave has decided to close it down permanently.
Flutterwave CEO had replied to a question regarding Barter in an interview: “Well, we used to have a product called Barter. However, currently, it is in an upgrade phase. We want to build a new product to make Barter even more efficient, so we are working on that.”
According to the company, all activities on the Barter app will cease on March 12. The company also warned customers to withdraw all their funds from the app, as it will become impossible to do so after March 12.
“While retail remains important to us, our immediate focus is optimizing services for businesses and remittance solutions,” Flutterwave said.
Barter History and Reviews
Barter was initially launched through the partnership between Visa and Flutterwave. The partnership was later switched to MasterCard. It was a consumer payment platform to enhance individual and small merchant payments within Africa and across its borders.
Startups making use of the platforms had complained to Bendada.com that it wasn’t reliable. Some other customers also voiced their complaints about downtime operational issues with the platform and card rejections by retailers, including Netflix, Facebook, PayPal, and Apple Music.
Effect Of Shutting Down Barter On Flutterwave
The move to shut down Barter aligns with their shift towards enterprise and remittance solutions. This is seen in the focus on the rebranding and global expansion of their Send into markets like Canada, the US, and India.
“Everything is growing very fast,” said Flutterwave founder and CEO Olugbenga Agboola. “Send app is growing at over 100%, and our portfolio of business is growing massively. So we have been growing massively YoY now.”
Effect of the Shut Down On the Customers
The decision to close down Barter might have some effects on the users, as most are already accustomed to using the platform as a form of payment. The users will have to find another means of transacting and paying to meet their needs. This could also impact businesses that have integrated the platform into their operational systems.
It is believed that the decision made by Flutterwave was strategic and needed to align with goals and aims that support the structure of the fintech company.
