Excellent self-critiquing. Bravo!
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@kananga Thatâs like saying Stripe is a reseller of Paypalâs Pay Button.
You do know Paypal has investments in Stripe right and Iâm pretty sure thereâs some system integrations between the two so does that now make Stripe Paypalâs reseller
What everyone has a problem with is âResellerâ
That is complete disregard for the unique value propositions each business offers
I have since acknowledged my poor choice of words.
Maybe I should have used the phrase âMiddle-manâ like techcabal used?
In any case, my point stands.
Dapo, YOU just helped me uncover the greatest mystery of all time. Iyin was brought in to front and be the face. I noticed Iyinâs linkedin profile says co-founder but no one has ever made a reference to the cofounders so i went digging. I saw this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYUEoZSjKA4 and on 11:11 he mentioned his co-founders but, without their names
I did more searching on linkedin and i found them https://ng.linkedin.com/in/gbengagb and Adeleke Adekoya. Both of them still work at Access Bank. I called my friends in Access who confirmed this
I wonder if the Silicon Valley people know this, but something looks very very fishy.
Why is being a technology reseller such a bad thing? in the end everyone is reselling everyone, whether they are using flutterwave or connecting to mastercard MIGS directly both are reselling Mastercards switching tech.
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Please help me ask o.
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I hope they all watch this
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I hate what this is doing (or has done) to the hardworking guys at Paystack.
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I will admit that the way the story was told seemed as though Paystack and others were just Middle Men who build user facing tools for the undelying Flutterwave API.
However, after the clarification by both parties, it is clear that this is not the case.
@kananga please drop this as the facts have been laid bare.
@iaboyeji Thanks for acknowledging the issue. Flutterwave will do well to properly communicate what is going on as most of the miscommunication came from the flutterwave team.
@xolubi and the rest of the Paystack guys⌠more grease to your elbows.
I am amused that this is even an issue that âWEâ have decided to devote so much brain cells to. Flutterwave and Paystack have a common investor and went through the same accelerator. If they are not collaborating or depending on each other, I should be worried. I think it is time we grow up and take ego and rumours out of tech. As a startup, you should be more concerned about the market and let payment companies be concerned over you. We seem to be doing the reverse in this case. This schoolyard mentality will not make the market take Nigerian tech seriously and probably will be doing damage to both companies.
We are in an unprecedented era where for the first time it is possible to start something and integrate payments without headache and we are worrying about the order of appearance in the credits instead of enjoying the movie.
The interesting part of all this is that it doesnât make any difference the processor or acquirer you use if you donât have customers who want to pay for the service you are offering. The man on the street will not care if you are using SimplePay or Paystack, they just want service.
The people probably laughing at all this will be Interswitch. Remember them? They have been there since and were the ones yâall wanted somebody to âdisruptâ. Freedom has come but we are arguing over who turned the key to the jail door.
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Sir Victor,
This is not what this is about. Iâm sure itâs not what Ezra intended. Everyone is up fixing his/her piece of the puzzle or the part that interests them or find important. If oneâs most important work is being undermined because of a relationship, I believe itâs only proper to react. I wonât do less of what Ezra has done, and I probably would have done it a long time ago too.
I agree with your central point of businesses collaborating together, itâs what works but not this way. For many even on Radar with lots of Paystack/Flutterwave current and prospective customers/employees or even investors, itâs assumed/said PS is no longer relevant in the chain of things because of FW presence, or FW can just wake up to eat PS food anytime it pleases. Not here to quote anyone.
More of working together and solving problems, but we all truly know why this is important and made clear. We should not reduce this to schoolyard conversation especially when a company is seemingly hurt by a narrative. That wonât be a very honest outlook of things.
Beyond appealing to customers that may/may not understand the role of these companies, investors and prospective Engineers are there too, to sell your mission to. Who wants to work with/invest in a âtechnology resellerâ when you can work with the actual âtechnology makerâ? Both companies are builders with great guys behind it but the story and relationship have undermined the other knowingly or not.
When we push out our stories, we should consider the impact it may have on our partners, and thankfully, Iyin acknowledges that. The stories we tell sometimes could be everything we have.
Yahoo is where it is today because it kept positioning itself as a media company(out of fear for Microsoft) while Google kept saying they were tech. End of the day, everyone will be alright.
I should add Iâm a fan of both companies and the people behind them.
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Contrary to the general sentiments expressed here, I believe there is a foundation behind @kanangaâs argument which is just being brushed off under the general claim he made earlier concerning Flutterwaveâs relationship with other companies, which has proven somewhat untrue. Or the general claim about PayStack being a simple reseller when it clearly does much more.
I actually encourage this type of discourse, this is exactly what we should be talking about: transparency so industry players and those aspiring to disrupt or invest, know exactly what we are dealing with.
The point that has not been addressed is whether or not Paystack is a first or second tier business when it comes to access to the core payment platforms. Are PayStack and Flutterwave both on the same tier in a symbiotic relationship where they depend on each other or does PayStack function at a lower tier in this relationship with Flutterwave having more direct access?
I understand the part where Paystack occasionally routes certain payments through Flutterwave but why exactly do they do so instead of directly? Does Flutterwave have direct access to certain platforms that Paystack doesnât?
It may seem like a rabble rousers argument but these things have to be laid out in extremely clear terms for avoidance of doubt so we all know what is what. Building the tech and creating seamless payment options which PayStack has done excellently is just as important as ensuring transparency in the fledgling sector and helping other developers and players along the way understand what they are dealing with.
People here are of above average and higher IQs and logical straightforward, unambiguous responses are required, not the typical Nigerian method of devolving into rofo-rofo and attacking personalities or backgrounds or whether a person is 1337 or geek enough to understand the tech in play.
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@akindolu I was going to write a long treatise on why the narrative business is bullshit but I will just leave you with this gem from Business Insider on Facebook vs Google and Apple:
Ultimately it is your business model that gets you customers and not the narrative. I think we have spent more time on this matter than we ordinarily should have. As for people bothered where anyone is in the value chain, there is no chain. It is a web of relationships. The ecosystem is âThe Stackâ. We should all be dependent on each other the way Silicon Valley is.
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In a well-functioning payment system thatâs built for reliability, there are multiple levels of redundancy in each interface. It is perfectly possible that PS may route some transactions (say Verve) to FW, and route Mastercard transactions directly to Mastercard. It is also possible that PS may have a direct relationship with Verve and still route some transactions through FW. Sometimes it simply because a channel is temporarily more reliable or it can even be a feature-based transaction such as computing a risk score or verifying a BVN.
The whole âX powers Yâ is an anathema in the very conservative financial industry that I know of, where banks bail each other out everyday with any word in the press about it. After all, you donât hear Visa or Mastercard saying âit powers PayPalâ.
Fair point. We should also consider that where two businesses are competing for the same customer, X saying it powers Y can reasonably be construed as X actively âdemarketingâ Y.
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I have never read a more intelligent comment than this on this forum.
Ego is definitely the no. 1 killer.
Visa or Mastercard is just a small logo on cards, but they are in charge!
Paypal has been there. Stripe came in. Many more will still come.
Globally, there is still more room for disruption.
And in Nigeria, the room is even bigger.
The important thing is the value you create, and this value is almost certain to depend on the value others create/have created.
I think we should celebrate success, as far as it Nigerian.
That is what unity is all about. That is what brings about more disruption.
Life is not a competition. We all die in the end.
Kudos Paystack!..Kudos Flutterwave!..and Kudos to the nextWave/nextStack that is coming.
ps: In fact, Ill be very glad to combine Paystack and Flutterwave to create eye payment technology.
This will make it easier to process money on the streets!
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Yes, I understand all this but which exactly is it? Coming out clear and saying why they do use Flutterwave in the first place leaves no room for ambiguity. Otherwise possible suggestions on what is what by uninvolved third-parties is just speculation. I am aware that a certain clan culture (as well as the usual Nigerian bad belle and âPhDâ) persists in the Nigerian version of Silicon Valley but as an observer on the fringes, transparency is key. A claim has been made and the foundation of the matter should be dealt with decisively. Why does Paystack use Flutterwave? Is the relationship symbiotic peer to peer or a case of second tier to lower tier?
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âweâre working to organise an AMA with some of the Flutterwave team to explain their mission, what they do, and tackle some of these questions in the coming weeks. Weâll keep you posted.â
Any updates on this? @seyitaylor @iaboyeji
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There you go, the ambiguity was avoided from the very beginning. @niyi is right about the multiple paths for redundancy. It is why we have we have the same relationship with both GTB and Zenith. Iâm all for transparency as well, which is why I took my time to outline the multiple relationships that make Paystack what it is.
@asemota I donât quite agree with you about the narrative business being bullshit. We encounter it first hand in our sales meetings where it is now pretty much a given that at some point, we find ourselves having to correct the X powers Y narrative to get a buy-in.
If this was an ego matter, I would have erupted (to put in dramatic terms) a long time ago.
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Ezra, If I am at a meeting and someone is asking me if X powers Y, then maybe I shouldnât be working for that type of client. We run aggregators in several countries and are âpoweredâ by several people. I have found that my value proposition is more important than my backend. I actually also choose who to work with because of fraud. If there is an underlying trust issue in the market, this is not how to deal with it.
I think Paystack should transcend all of this by building up numbers. Nobody asks if Facebook is run on Android or IOS.
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What you are saying is I shouldnât have responded to a misconception? We will have to disagree.
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