San Francisco and Lagos-based fintech startup Flutterwave recently announced it’s partnership with Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba’s Alipay to offer digital payments between Africa and China.

The partnership simply aims to help Flutterwave merchants receive payments easily from over 1 billion Alipay users via the Rave Flutterwave payment gateway. The Alipay partnership follows one between Flutterwave and Visa earlier this year that led to the launching of a consumer payment product for Africa, called GetBarter.

“This means that all our merchants can accept or install Alipay as a payment type to accept payments from its billion users,” Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga Agboola told reporters. “There’s a lot of trade between Africa and China, and this integration makes it easier for African merchants to accept Chinese customer payments.”

With a large portion of Alipay’s network situated in China, the shrewd move will see Flutterwave, capture payment activity around an estimated $200 billion in China-Africa trade, which Flutterwave Chief Executive Officer, Olugbenga “GB” Agboola said will mean that, “All our merchants can accept Alipay as a payment method“.

Commenting further on this initiative, GB said “This isn’t an unprecedented move. The answer to why we’re opening up Africa to the Chinese buyers, lies in what we have set out to do since inception. We set out to provide the complete payment solution for Africans to thrive in the global economy, and this is exactly what this partnership will achieve, as the complete payment solution would first require interconnectivity within Africa which we are already winning at, then connectivity from Africa to the world..”

As a Flutterwave merchant, you don’t need to do anything as it will be activated to all merchants once it’s officially launched.

If you still don’t have a Rave account, register for Flutterwave Rave account here to get one and start accepting payments from virtually everyone.