Are you looking for an African payment gateway and wondering: What is the most popular payment gateway in Africa right now? Which one is the most functional? Which is the cheapest and most profitable? Which is the most promising?
In this article, we analyze three of the most popular African gateways to help you choose the best option just for your business.
Paystack
Paystack is a pioneering payment gateway based in Nigeria that provides businesses and individuals with a safe and secure platform to accept online payments both across Africa and internationally.
The gateway is focused on the African market and plays a significant role in the promotion and development of online payments, helping businesses on the continent expand access to financial services in regions with limited access to traditional banking services and addressing the region’s unique challenges and opportunities.
Paystack combines multiple payment methods, while opening access to the international market for local businesses and focusing on supporting all relevant local payment methods commonly used in Africa.
The payment gateway’s competitive pricing significantly sets it apart from other gateways in the market, offering favorable terms for businesses of all sizes, especially startups and SMEs.
Enabling Seamless Online Payments
Transforming Digital Payments
in Africa
Flutterwave
Flutterwave is an emerging fintech company based in Africa that provides a range of financial technology solutions including payment processing services.
The company is helping to drive e-commerce growth and increase access to finance for individuals and businesses across Africa.
The multi-currency support and multi-country coverage of this payment gateway allows African businesses to operate internationally.
Flutterwave has provided solutions for companies operating on marketplaces. The platform simplifies payment management, disbursement of funds and processing of complex transactions on marketplaces on special terms.
Flutterwave is equipped with basic real-time reporting and analytics tools and thus enables companies to gain insights into their transactions and financial performance.
PayFast
PayFast is a renowned payment gateway and online payment processing service based in South Africa.
As one of the first payment gateways in Africa, founded in 2008, PayFast has played a vital role in facilitating online transactions for businesses and individuals in the South African market and in driving the growth of e-commerce in the region.
PayFast supports recurring billing, making it suitable for businesses and subscription-based organizations that require regular billing of customers.
The gateway allows for some level of customization during the checkout process, allowing companies to maintain their branding and user experience.
A distinctive area of the field is charity. The payment gateway facilitates charitable donations, making it useful for non-profit organizations and fundraising efforts.
Streamlining Online Payments
in South Africa
Functionality Comparison: Paystack vs. Flutterwave vs. Payfast
| Feature |  |  |  |
| Niche of use | Entrepreneurs Corporates Global Brands Startups in Fintech Ecommerce Agencies Education and other industries | Enterprise SME Personal | Businesses of all sizes in Ecommerce, Fintech, Event Ticketing and Accepting Donations industries |
| Coverage | African countries and international market | Range of African and international markets | South Africa and neighboring countries |
| Supported Countries | Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, United States, United Arab Emirates | Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Nigeria, Rest of Europe, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, United Kingdom, United states, Zambia | South Africa |
| Payment Methods |
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|
| Integration |
|
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| Customizable Checkout | Yes | Yes | Limited customization |
| Security Certificates |
|
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| Fees |
|
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| Developer APIs | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Customer Support |
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| Customer support |
| Recurring Billing | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Subscription Management | No | No | No |
When looking for the best payment gateway for your business, there are many factors to consider, including scalability and user experience.
Flutterwave
The extensive number of supported countries makes Flutterwave a sought-after tool for local and international transactions. The gateway provides payment solutions customized to the unique needs of African businesses for a price that is average of the three payment gateways evaluated. Flutterwave’s convenient and easy integration with a range of e-commerce platforms, a dedicated built-in solution for marketplaces and multi-currency support make the gateway one of the most optimal solutions for e-commerce businesses.
Payfast
Payfast is significantly inferior to the other two gateways due to its limited geographical coverage, which is a critical disadvantage for growing and developing businesses in the online sphere that are not limited by lines on the map. If you plan to operate exclusively in the local market, Payfast’s functionality will be your great assistant in securely accepting payments from customers and even generating financial reports based on transaction data and payment history. It is for this reason that Payfast offers the greatest variety of local payment methods. Nevertheless, among the gateways under consideration, it is Payfast that has the highest local transaction fee. However, if even in distant plans you have prospects of entering foreign markets, we recommend you to choose a gateway that works in your potential future market, because new integration when you have a large number of customers and their payments can be quite problematic.
Paystack
Paystack is a great option for scaling your business both locally and globally, with support for many countries and a large number of payment methods to meet the needs and preferences of your potential customers around the world. Paystack is a multi-currency gateway that offers easy integration with various e-commerce platforms and website developers widely used in Africa. Among the gateways analyzed, Paystack has the lowest fees, which will be beneficial for both startups for whom every cent is vital and large companies with a large number of recurring payments. And the coverage of supported niches makes the gateway a nearly universal tool for many types of businesses, including subscription model businesses.
While all gateways support recurring payments, none of them have subscription management functionality, as do other African payment gateways that were not included in the list analyzed in this article. Consequently, African subscription model companies have difficulties with this fundamental element of the operation of their entire business.
Making this analysis of payment gateways and trying to evaluate the efficiency and profitability of one or another for business by objective indicators, we leaned in favor of Paystack. All other things being equal, Paystack shows the best ratio of a large number of popular payment methods and a relatively low price per transaction. And the fact that since 2020 Paystack is part of the Stripe conglomerate (one of the largest online payment service companies in the world) means high prospects and reliability of the gateway both in the African market and internationally.
Why did we conduct this in-depth analysis? To make sure we offer the best solution to our customers!
Introducing Rainex, a billing and subscription management platform that includes integration with Paystack. Get powerful functionality to scale your business on a subscription model with no transaction fees! Today Paystack has grown into an international platform for credit and debit payment processing. And the gateway will continue to grow by expanding its geographic reach.
And Rainex empowers you with:
- Complete efficient subscription management with free trials, different types of auto-generated invoices and more.
- Flexible creation of pricing plans with any frequency and in any currency, supplemented with addons and chargers, discounts and coupons.
- Quality communication with customers with automatic fully customizable trigger event notifications.
- Accurate and up-to-date data-driven decision making on marketing and product development strategy with multiple metrics and customizable dashboards.
- Control and manage customer churn with dunning systems, intelligent retries, and customer retention tools.
Interested in the Rainex+Paystack combo?
Then go to the Rainex+Paystack integration page and learn more.
Or let us walk you through the solution and answer any questions you may have in a free demo.
