PayPal’s Xoom partners with Flutterwave to speed up money transfers to Nigeria

Xoom, a money transfer service owned by PayPal, has partnered with Flutterwave to enable users to send money directly to Nigerian bank accounts. The deal uses Flutterwave’s local payout infrastructure to settle transfers faster and in naira.

Under the partnership, money sent through Xoom is converted by Flutterwave and paid out directly into recipient bank accounts in Nigeria. The banks involved include Access Bank, United Bank for Africa, Zenith Bank, First Bank of Nigeria, and Guaranty Trust Bank, among others.

Flutterwave will handle the local currency conversion and settlement. Xoom will continue to handle the international side of the transfer, including compliance and fraud checks, across about 160 markets worldwide.

Nigeria is the largest recipient of personal remittances in Sub-Saharan Africa. The country received more than $20 billion in personal remittances in 2024. Despite this, receiving money from abroad has often been slow and difficult due to foreign exchange limits and settlement delays.

The deal comes at a time when Flutterwave is expanding its role in cross-border payments. Days before the Xoom announcement, Flutterwave secured an investment from Circle Ventures, the venture arm of USDC issuer Circle. That deal added USDC as a second stablecoin settlement option on Flutterwave’s platform, alongside RLUSD, which Flutterwave adopted through a partnership with Ripple in June.

Flutterwave operates payment infrastructure in 34 African countries. The company says it has processed more than 1 billion transactions worth over $50 billion since its founding in 2016. Its customers include Uber, Air Peace, Bamboo, and PiggyVest.

The Xoom deal is the second major PayPal move into Nigeria this year. In January, PayPal partnered with Nigerian fintech Paga to let Nigerian users link their PayPal accounts to Paga wallets. That partnership allowed Nigerians to receive international payments directly on PayPal and withdraw the funds in naira, something PayPal had not supported in the country for nearly two decades. PayPal suspended services in Nigeria in 2004 over fraud concerns. 

Paga said tens of thousands of Nigerians signed up for the PayPal linkage soon after it launched. The company processed ₦17 trillion across 169 million transactions in 2025 and expected the partnership to further increase that volume.

Both deals give PayPal two separate routes into Nigeria. The Paga partnership covers PayPal account holders who receive payments directly on the platform. The Xoom deal covers senders who use Xoom to transfer money to family and friends without either party needing a PayPal account.

Both rely on local Nigerian partners for currency conversion and payouts, since PayPal does not settle funds directly into Nigerian bank accounts.

Last updated: July 10, 2026