This new feature is a big step forward in Unlimit’s mission to deliver faster, more secure, and frictionless payment solutions that drive growth for merchants.

The Click-to-Pay feature simplifies the checkout process by removing the need for shoppers to manually enter their card details.

Instead, customers, who are part of their card schemes’  Click-to-Pay programmes, can seamlessly verify their identity through an email or phone number, allowing their payment information to be automatically populated. 

This not only accelerates the transaction process but also reduces fraud, thanks to the tokenization of the customers’ data, and checkout abandonment – the latter being a major concern for merchants all over the globe. 

The enhanced security, combined with streamlined verification, is expected to improve transaction approval rates and minimise payment rejections, contributing to higher conversion rates for businesses.

“With Click-to-Pay, we are addressing a major friction point in the online payment journey, while also enhancing security and boosting merchant performance,” said Irene Skrynova, chief customer officer at Unlimit. 

“The innovative payment solution will enable us to provide increased convenience to consumers and empower merchants to maximise revenue while mitigating fraud risks.”

The launch of Click-to-Pay comes amid growing demand for faster, more efficient digital transactions, particularly in e-commerce, and is supported by major card schemes.

With Click-to-pay, Unlimit strengthens its existing offering and enables merchants to offer a seamless and secure checkout experience to customers around the world.

Africa’s payment systems are still far from perfect. While millions of digital transactions failed in 2023, 40% were left unresolved, most of them tied to infrastructure and connectivity issues. 

But then, two fintech giants, including Paystack and Flutterwave, have thrived to build billion-dollar businesses on top of this challenge.

Both companies are working to fix the same broken pipe, just with different sets of tools and philosophies.

We are not talking about who’s better dressed for the cameras, but who’s building better, smarter platforms, stronger systems, and more sustainable impact. Let’s break it down.

Paystack was founded in Lagos in 2015 by Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi. Just five years later, it was acquired by Stripe for $200 million. That deal is still one of the biggest and most talked-about in Africa’s startup history. 

Stripe didn’t just buy the product, it bought into a team with a strong engineering culture and a good hold on what Nigerian businesses needed.

Flutterwave came shortly after, in 2016, founded by lyinoluwa Aboyeji, Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola and Adeleke Adekoya. Unlike Paystack, Flutterwave had a much bigger goal from the onset. 

It pushed for pan-African reach early, and later expanded into Europe and the U.S. At its peak, Flutterwave hit a valuation of over $3 billion, becoming one of Africa’s most valuable startups.

So, while Paystack is usually seen as stable and engineering-focused, Flutterwave is viewed as fast, and globally aggressive.

Technology and Developer Ecosystem

If you ask developers who’ve used both platforms, most will tell you Paystack is a “developers dream”, as Paystack has always prioritised clean, predictable APIs, detailed documentation, and a thoughtful user interface. There’s a clear Stripe influence in how they structure developer support.

On the other hand, Flutterwave gives more product layers, especially for businesses operating across borders. Its APIs cover more, not limited to remittances, virtual cards, POS solutions, and more. 

However, some developers complain about inconsistent updates and limited sandbox experiences, making integration sometimes challenging. 

While Paystack does offer POS solutions through its Paystack Terminal, Flutterwave provides a wider suite of tools aimed at companies with need for global expansion.

Where Paystack seems methodical, Flutterwave has more speed. It all depends on what a business prioritises, ease of use or more functionality.

Products

Both companies started as payment gateways. But they’ve grown in different directions.

Paystack has focused on helping African SMEs go digital. Its checkout system is clean. The dashboard is easy to understand, and the storefront feature lets even non-technical users set up a simple online shop in minutes. Paystack’s approach is bottom-up, start small, scale steadily.

Flutterwave, meanwhile, has its eyes on bigger targets. From enterprise clients to international remittance flows, the company has rolled out tools like Send and the now-defunct Barter. While Barter didn’t last, Send has picked up momentum, especially among Africans in the diaspora.

Flutterwave’s system is more complex, but it’s also more layered. It’s built to support multinationals and institutions just as easily as it supports a local merchant.

Market Reach and Expansion Strategy

This is one of the biggest contrasts.

Paystack operates in just a few countries, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Egypt, Rwanda and Côte d’Ivoire. Its growth is controlled and strategic. Before entering a new market, Paystack tends to build infrastructure, secure licences, and form partnerships that will give it staying power.

Flutterwave, by contrast, spreads fast. The company has presence in over 35 African countries, and is constantly announcing new partnerships, including Air Peace, Uber, and various government-backed platforms. It is more willing to enter complex markets quickly and fix challenges as they come.

Some argue Flutterwave is spreading itself too thin. Others say it’s in a sector in which payment infrastructure is occupied by whoever gets there first.

Regulation and Compliance

Paystack has largely stayed out of controversy, aside from its recent issue with Zap. It’s seen as disciplined and transparent, perhaps owing to its Stripe parentage. It doesn’t move until all the pieces are in place, especially when it comes to regulation.

Flutterwave, in contrast, has seen its name in the news for the wrong reasons. The company faced regulatory issues in Kenya, including frozen bank accounts and investigations into alleged licence breaches. There were also internal governance issues that made headlines last year. 

Flutterwave denies wrongdoing in many of these cases, and continues to operate, but the impact on its public perception cannot be ignored.

If stability is your metric, Paystack holds the advantage here. If you value risk tolerance, Flutterwave might appeal more.

Brand and Public Perception

Paystack has built a reputation around quiet excellence, its branding is minimalist and it doesn’t talk unless it’s necessary. But among developers and small business owners, it commands deep respect.

Flutterwave, meanwhile, enjoys far more name recognition. It’s louder and highly visible at major tech events and in the press. This has helped with brand reach but also made it a target for high public attention and regulatory eyes. While many users admire its ambition, others worry about reliability and governance.

Internally, Paystack is seen as an engineer’s company. Flutterwave is often described as a “business-first” company. Both cultures work, but they attract different kinds of talent and partnerships.

Financials and Investment

Flutterwave has raised more capital, over $450 million across multiple rounds. That helped it scale quickly and pay for expansion, even if profitability wasn’t an immediate focus.

Paystack, having been acquired by Stripe, no longer chases investor rounds. It may not raise public rounds anymore, but it enjoys backing from one of the world’s most influential fintechs. This means better internal tools, more hiring leverage, and long-term financial support without the pressure of constant fundraising.

One could argue Paystack trades speed for stability, while Flutterwave trades risk for market leadership.

Innovation and Sustainability 

Both companies are now pushing beyond payment processing.

Paystack is gradually introducing tools that support the entire lifecycle of online businesses, from storefronts to invoicing to data dashboards. Its vision appears to be building an ecosystem for African SMEs, simple, integrated, and sustainable.

Flutterwave, in contrast, is swinging big. It’s targeting global remittances, embedded finance, and infrastructure. It wants to become the backbone of all kinds of financial activity on the continent and beyond.

Their futures are not incompatible, but their focus is different.

Strategic Differentiators

This isn’t Coke vs Pepsi. It’s more like chess vs speed chess.

Paystack is calculated, quiet, and efficient.
Flutterwave moves fast, takes risks, and isn’t afraid to make mistakes along the way.

If I were a small business looking for reliability and clarity, I’d likely choose Paystack. If I were a fast-scaling business targeting five countries at once, Flutterwave would give me more tools.

They’re both building a resilient finance sector in Africa. They’re just choosing different roads to get there.

Most discussions surrounding the future of payments tend to focus on developed markets; however, much can be learned from developing markets such as Nigeria in understanding what really shapes global payment solutions.

With its specific challenges as well as opportunities, Nigeria has carved a niche as a laboratory of innovation around payments, and it shows how creativity and adaptability overcome barriers and drive progress.

Mobile money is the one outstanding feature in the Nigerian payment ecosystem, with mobile money services such as Paga and OPay revolutionizing the way money is sent, received, or stored by a largely non-banking populace.

They brought marketing to the users, allowing them to conduct transactions with nothing more than their mobile phone without undergoing the rigors of having to open a bank account traditionally.

If Nigeria, whose situation presents some of the greatest challenges in mobile money, succeeds in something as basic as bringing everyone into the payment ecosystem, it illustrates how payment solutions must, themselves, be low-cost, best-suited, and accessible to the unbanked.

Thus, it is a lesson worth taking by other regions toward confronting the same challenge and offering solutions to overcome it.

Collaboration is arguably what most solidly springs out from Nigeria. It is reputedly anchored on partnerships from fintech start-ups and banks, as well as telecom providers, and that is why regulators are adding their voice in the Nigerian payments ecosystem.

The merger between MTN—the country’s leading telecoms provider—and banks enabled this huge success, being that MTN Mobile Money is a service that exploits the broad reach of mobile networks and the inherent security that the banking infrastructure offers.

All these can be very much linked as part of the reasons why they are seen to give more value to the solutions they create together; thus, for the global markets too, it goes to show that pooling together between the traditional players and the fintech organizations will definitely help drive innovations in payment matters.

From the Nigerian experience, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), as a regulator, has been very proactive in creating a regulatory environment.

These regulations indeed play a pivotal factor in shaping the payment landscape that promotes innovation while ensuring safety and stability. Initiatives such as the Payment Service Bank license and cashless policy have built a framework within which digital payments could grow.

At the same time, the CBN has instituted guidelines that consumer protection has played along with policies against fraud like the Bank Verification Number (BVN) system.

This requirement will highlight the need for regulators to increasingly work toward finding a balance between enabling financial innovation and safeguarding the financial system for the global markets.

There is also a general trend emerging among the rise of digital wallets and QR code payments among consumers in Nigeria.

The likes of Quickteller and PalmPay have simplified digital payment for consumers and merchants, especially in informal markets.

QR codes, in particular, have gained a lot of ground and acceptance because they offer an inexpensive way to pay for services.

They are also very easy to use and require minimal infrastructure. Global payment providers should design solutions that are intuitive, easy to use, and compatible with existing behaviors as the keys to driving adoption in traditionally cash-dominated markets are simplicity and accessibility.

Nigeria’s payment ecosystem teaches resilience and adaptability. The infrastructure challenges, like unreliable electricity and internet connectivity, have forced innovators to come up with solutions that function with very wrong environments.

It highlights that USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) codes have become the most popular payment methods due to their compatibility with basic mobile phones and lack of internet connectivity.

Such discoveries show how resourceful these Nigerian innovators have been and are a good lesson to share with world markets undergoing similar experiences.

Nigeria’s payments ecosystem has challenges, including fraud and cybersecurity, which are real concerns that would call for continuous investment in security measures and consumer education.

The user is confused about navigating unconsolidated systems with no single payment standard due to innovation.

All stakeholders (i.e., the regulators, financial institutions, and fintech companies) must work together to solve these challenges.

So, what can global markets learn from Nigeria’s payment system? First and foremost, accessibility and inclusivity must come first, designing solutions that meet the needs of traditionally underserved populations.

Encourage collaboration between traditional players and innovators to make progress. Create regulatory environments that encourage innovation while ensuring security and stability.

Manage simplicity and adaptability to push adoption and mitigate infrastructure challenges. Invest in security and education towards consumer trust protection.

By virtue of innovation and resilience before it, Nigeria’s payment ecosystem is a source to learn from.

It provides lessons to be internalized in crafting payment systems for global markets that are technologically advanced but, at the same time, inclusive, accessible, and impactful.

More than ever, with lessons from Nigeria, payment systems meant to work for everyone is charted out in pathways wherein financial inclusion becomes the priority in solving current challenges posed by a turning world towards digital. Nigeria is setting the standard for global payments in the future.

*Oluwaseun Adeoye is a Product Manager with 12+ years in finance, specializing in electronic payments and digital banking. He holds a Computer Science degree from Bowen University and is pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Cloud Data Management at Conestoga College. Skilled in API integration, business development, and project management, he has delivered customized payment solutions for Nigerian and global markets.

Outside work, he enjoys learning, music, and leveraging technology to simplify tasks.

Speaking at the unveiling ceremony in Lagos, Gabriel Ferrer, the chief operating officer (COO) of Pisi, said the new brand identity reflected the company’s broader vision.

“We are not just unveiling a new brand; we are celebrating our commitment to empowering Nigerian businesses,” he said.

Ferrer explained that Pisi’s rebranding from Pisi Mobile to Pisi was a testament to the company’s evolution and growth. “Going forward, it will be known simply as Pisi, with a variety of services under this new identity.”

Ferrer emphasized the company’s dedication to delivering exceptional service to its partners. “We are a B2B company focused on making life easier and simpler for other businesses through technological solutions,” he added.

The rebranding includes the introduction of several new features and innovations.

“We are bringing in payments, a marketplace, enhanced messaging solutions, and we continue to operate as a VAS aggregator,” Ferrer explained.

“Additionally, we are improving our ad tech business services with new solutions to execute campaigns.”

Addressing the expectations that come with the rebranding, Ferrer assured that the company is continuously developing new features and improving its capacities.

“Our goal is to deliver added value to our customers through expanded services and improved infrastructure,” he said.

Ferrer highlighted that the rebranding aligns with the company’s long-term projects. “This marks the beginning of growth and diversification. We started as a VAS aggregator and have since expanded our services to solve existing problems for customers and businesses in Africa,” he stated.

Although the rebranding initiative was internally driven, Ferrer noted that customer feedback channels remain active. “Our team felt the brand needed a refresh to align with our new expectations,” he said.

He added that Pisi’s innovative solutions, including its VAS Aggregation, AdTech Solutions, Messaging Solutions, Telecom Products, Marketplaces, and Payment Solutions, were designed to make life easier for Nigerian businesses.

Speaking earlier, Bukayo Ewuoso, head of Business Advertising, echoed these sentiments.

He highlighted the motivation behind the rebranding.

“Our partners are evolving, and it’s necessary for us to evolve with them. At the heart of what we do is innovation, and as a technology company, we are always looking to serve our partners better and empower businesses in Africa.”

The rebranding, which sees the company adopting the name Pisi for various services, aims to introduce new features and solutions.

“We’re launching Pisi Advertising Technology, focusing on ad tech, payment solutions in 2025, and Pisi Send, a messaging solution already live for 2024.

“Additionally, we’re introducing a Marketplace in 2025 to enable users to buy airtime, pay bills, and more.”

During the user research phase, the need for trustworthy, locally tailored solutions was evident. “We went back to the drawing board to test and improve our products. Whether it’s from a B2B or B2C perspective, we aim to cut down steps and increase success rates,” Ewuoso stated.

He further addressed the specifics of the rebranding, noting that while there will be changes to the logo and name, the core expansion of business solutions is the focus.

“We will be known as Pisi, encompassing several solutions like Pisi Mobile for aggregation, Pisi Ads for ad tech, Pisi Max for marketplace utilities, and Pisi pay for payment solutions.”

The rebranding is designed to cater to the diverse needs of their B2B target audience, including lifestyle, luxury, healthcare, and education sectors.

Ewuoso emphasized the significant market potential in Nigeria with 104 million mobile users and a 90% mobile penetration rate. “Our solutions aim to reach those without internet access and add value through mobile subscriptions.”

Addressing the dynamics of the VaaS market, Ewuoso also reassured that despite evolving consumer behavior and economic realities, partnerships remain strong and valuable.

“The industry is growing, and we continue to add value to end-users,” he concluded.

The event was attended by business leaders, innovators, and stakeholders in the Nigerian technology ecosystem.

In his remarks, a guest at the event commended Pisi for its commitment to empowering Nigerian businesses.

“Pisi’s new brand identity is a testament to the power of Nigerian ingenuity and determination,” he said.

The event featured a showcase of Pisi’s innovative solutions, as well as a presentation on the company’s vision and mission.