Paystack vs. Flutterwave: Which Is Your Preferred Payment Processor?
Paystack vs. Flutterwave
When payment processing is mentioned in Nigeria, two top names immediately come to mind: Paystack and Flutterwave. Many businesses, entrepreneurs, large corporations, freelancers, and others use the two payment processors.
However, before a company makes an informed decision on which payment processor to use, it's a good idea to look at the features that both have to offer, among other things.
This article aims to simplify the process by highlighting key aspects of the products that a merchant, business, or freelancer may require to make an informed decision.
This will be decided by three (3) factors:
1. Tools & Features,
2. Pricing,
3. Customer Service.
1. Tools and Features
This section discusses the various features and resources that both companies have built into their products to make payment collection as simple as possible for their customers.
While preferences vary depending on the type of business or user, certain tools make the process run smoothly. And it is on this basis that potential users will make their decisions. Let's take a closer look.
Paystack’s Tools and Features
Merchants have access to a range of features and resources on the Paystack dashboard built to make their company and payment collection much simpler. Take a look at a few examples:
Pages for making payments: These are single pages on Paystack that will help you receive payments from people for a specific product. These pages may be used to receive a one-time payment, a recurring/subscription payment, or a payment for a product. You may also receive either a fixed payment sum or a variety of payment amounts on the website. You can obtain more than just basic information by customizing a Paystack payment tab. For your payment page, you can also build a custom link.
Products: This feature allows you to keep track of a simple product inventory and sell them directly or via Payment Pages. You will see a list of all the items you want to sell from your Paystack Dashboard on the Products Page. You can sell single or multiple items using this option.
Invoices: this feature allows you to "bill your customers easily or send professional invoices." For freelancers and contract employees, this can be extremely beneficial.
Recurring billings: Your customers can use this feature to set up a subscription plan (for instance) paid regularly. You can build a plan and have users subscribe to it.
Chargeback: Paystack launched a modern, fully automated chargeback mechanism in 2018. When a customer feels they haven't earned value, they may request money be returned to them. Paystack Merchants have the option of accepting or disputing the argument with proof.
Flutterwave's Tools and Features
The following are some of the features available to Flutterwave users:
Virtual cards: Flutterwave's card issuing platform allows you to build and manage virtual cards. This means you can build cards for various purposes and set spending or site-specific limits on them. This is a feature that we feel is made possible by a VISA affiliation.
Invoices: Flutterwave invoicing, like Paystack, allows you to quickly build professional invoices, get paid, and monitor payments. The ability to submit these invoices directly to Whatsapp is the cherry on top. You may also use automatic alerts to remind the customers to pay on time.
Checkout: Flutterwave's checkout page allows you to receive payment from your customers. It enables a business owner to accept payments from customers in over 150 currencies, including Naira, Dollars, Euro, Pounds, and Yuan.
Payment Links: These are links that assist you in collecting funds from customers. They work similarly to Paystack's "payment sites." Flutterwave payment links can be one-time or subscription-based.
Others: Payouts and POS functions are listed as "coming soon" on the Flutterwave website.
2. Pricing
Pricing templates for different packages are available on both payment platforms. Local and international transactions are the most common. They also only charge per purchase, making sense because their merchants/customers only make money when they sell something (or carry out transactions).
For local purchases, Paystack charges 1.5 percent plus NGN 100. For transactions under NGN 2,500, the NGN 100 charge is waived. The fact that transaction fees are capped at NGN 2,000 is a unique feature of Paystack's pricing. This means that's the highest a merchant will ever pay for Paystack transactions.
Flutterwave, on the other hand, charges a 1.4 percent per local transaction processing fee. Processing fees are also capped at NGN 2000, but there is no additional NGN 100 charge, unlike Paystack.
Paystack and Flutterwave both charge a 3.9 percent (+ NGN 100) and 3.8 percent processing fee for international transactions, respectively.
3. Customer Support
Aside from features, software, and pricing, (potential) consumers must dig a little deeper to see how both products' support is. Customer service is an essential component of every enterprise. And, inany case, when a product has a strong support staff, the users benefit. Based on our research both Flutterwave and Paystack has excellent customer support system, even though it may take some time for a response at some peak hours, this is usually due to volume or spike of customers being attended to at the same time.
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