Standard Bank, Africa’s largest bank by assets, has partnered with Flutterwave, Africa’s leading payments technology company, to enhance digital payments across Africa.

Flutterwave and Standard Bank are collaborating to build e-commerce, card issuing, payments, collections, USSD, lending, and buy-now-pay-later capabilities for customers in Nigeria, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, Ghana, Mauritius, Cote D’Ivoire and Malawi. The integration will help customers including individuals, SMEs, large companies and institutions to fully leverage the power of digital payments and e-commerce to grow their businesses.

This announcement follows hot on the heels of last weeks announcement that Flutterwave and Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) have launched two new remittance corridors between Europe and Africa on the Stellar network. Working with TEMPO, Flutterwave is leveraging the Stellar network and Stellar USDC to simplify remittances in Africa.

The COVID crisis has changed how people buy and sell across Africa—enabling a massive shift to digital payments and e-commerce. According to Statista, digital responses were key to improving services within several sectors such as business, healthcare and education. A shift to digital payments accounted for 33% of all Covid-19 responses by governments and the private sector of Sub-Saharan African countries in 2020.

Institutions, businesses and individuals continue to think of ways to reach their customers using digital channels. With this partnership, Standard Bank will provide agile tech solutions to its customers to help them grow their businesses online and offline. This partnership denotes the unique collaborative relationship that exists between banks and fintechs across Africa where the customers’ needs and satisfaction take utmost priority.

Commenting on the news, Olugbenga GB Agboola, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Flutterwave said: “We are proud that Flutterwave’s white label services power digital efforts for top banks in Africa. Our partnership with Standard Bank demonstrates that fintechs and banks are not competitors but trusted partners with the key focus being the customer. We plan to grow financial and digital inclusion through this partnership and in the long run, we expect to generate more jobs in the digital economy and enable rapid business growth across the continent”.

Speaking during the announcement, Margaret Nienaber, Chief Executive Officer of Client Solutions at Standard Bank said: “Today’s announcement is an important step in Standard Bank’s platform journey expanding from our leadership position in traditional financial services to meet clients on the digital platforms where they are shopping, socialising and doing business.

Partnerships with innovative fintechs like Flutterwave underpin our strategy by integrating our scale and expertise across the African continent with the services and offerings of our partners to offer an expanded range of solutions, delivered in a seamless manner to our clients

Reinforcing the importance of the partnership to clients across the continent, Yinka Sanni, Chief Executive of Africa Regions at Standard Bank said: “Standard Bank has an almost 160-year history of serving clients and supporting economic development in Africa.

Today, we are the largest financial services group on the continent, with powerful scale advantages and strengths. Coupled with the innovation offered by Flutterwave, we can deliver real impact and growth opportunities to clients across the continent. We believe when our clients grow, Africa grows.”