Flutterwave has partnered with Xoom, PayPal’s international money transfer service, to enable faster transfers into Nigerian bank accounts. The deal connects Xoom’s global remittance network with Flutterwave’s local payout infrastructure, allowing senders abroad to move funds directly into accounts at major Nigerian banks with improved speed.
How the corridor works
Under the arrangement, transfers sent through Xoom are converted by Flutterwave and settled locally in naira. This allows recipients to receive funds directly into bank accounts at Access Bank, United Bank for Africa, Zenith Bank, First Bank, Guaranty Trust Bank, and other participating institutions across Nigeria. Xoom itself operates in roughly 160 markets globally, giving users abroad a familiar route for sending money home, paying bills, or topping up phones for family and friends in Nigeria.
The partnership addresses a persistent pain point in Nigeria’s remittance market. Nigeria receives more than $20 billion in personal remittances annually, making it the leading remittance recipient in Sub-Saharan Africa, yet international payments have historically been complicated due to foreign exchange constraints and settlement delays. By pairing Xoom’s international reach with Flutterwave’s compliance and banking relationships on the ground, the two companies are aiming to close that gap with a more direct financial corridor into the country.
A notable follow-up to Circle Ventures’ backing
The Xoom partnership lands just after Flutterwave secured an investment from Circle Ventures aimed at expanding USDC-powered payments and settlements across Africa, starting with Nigeria. Taken together, the two moves point to Flutterwave building out multiple rails, both stablecoin-based and traditional remittance-based, for moving money into the country more efficiently. Nigeria’s ICT sector is projected to contribute a significant share of GDP in the coming years, and faster, cheaper remittance flows feed directly into that growth story.
Following in Paga’s footsteps
Flutterwave’s move onto PayPal’s rails comes months after Paga struck its own partnership with PayPal, announced in January. That deal allowed Nigerian users to link PayPal accounts to Paga wallets, receive international payments, and withdraw funds instantly in naira, ending nearly two decades of restricted PayPal access in the country. Paga’s arrangement also opened its merchant base to PayPal’s global network of hundreds of millions of users, with settlement handled locally through Paga’s platform.
The Flutterwave and Xoom tie-up appears to build on that same underlying logic, using a licensed Nigerian payments company as the local settlement layer for PayPal-linked flows, but applies it specifically to Xoom’s remittance corridor rather than PayPal’s general consumer and merchant accounts. With Paga and Flutterwave now both plugged into PayPal-adjacent rails, Nigeria’s two most recognisable payments companies are effectively competing to become the default local gateway for PayPal’s global user base.