Another internet payments company, FloCash, announces Zimbabwe launch

Last week Friday we wrote that PesaPal, a popular Eastern African internet payment gateway, is expanding to Zimbabwe, and a few hours later, as if not to be outdone, another payments company announced the expansion of eCommerce payments services into Zimbabwe. Despite being based in the UK, the payments company, FloCash, has been described by some publications as the PayPal of Africa. According to the announcement, the company is already offering services in several African countries. 10 of them at least, was the count back in 2010.

“We are excited about the opportunity to extend our award winning technology and offerings to online merchants in Zimbabwe.” the company’s founder and MD, Said Sirak Mussie is quoted in the release. “We have setup a local office in Zimbabwe and anticipate it to be a major asset to our business as we develop our local presence in the region”

Like PesaPal, FloCash launches in Zimbabwe with major international debit and credit cards being accepted and then hopes to integrate mobile money services like EcoCash, Telecash, OneWallet and local bank cards.

Even though today’s release talks about eCommerce only, the FloCash website shows the payments platform is more than just eCommerce. It indeed is more a PayPal as there is peer to peer money transfer, and international remittances. Them not talking much about this other part of the business must mean the agent network hasn’t been developed yet locally.

If you’re into or are planning an eCommerce startup, the “there are no available internet payments solutions” excuse is pretty much becoming just an excuse. So far you can use Pay4App to accept EcoCash, PesaPal and FloCash for the international cards, and VPayments fot the local bank cards. There’s also strong indication both Econet and Telecel will be releasing their own internet payments API (either directly or via partners) in the not too distant future.

You can view the Flocash press release and fact sheet here (PDF)