African financial technology company Flutterwave has announced plans to shutdown usage of its virtual dollar card service, known as ‘Bartercard’ effective from July 17th, 2022.
It made the announcement to it’s customers on Friday, saying the shutdown will be till further notice.
The termination means that many users of the service will be denied access to carry out dollar related transactions using their financial platform, and may worsen online dollar transaction problem within Africa.
In message to the users, the company said, “you will be unable to make online and in-store payments and purchases using your Virtual Dollar Card(s); You will be unable to fund existing Virtual Dollar Card(s); your existing Virtual Dollar Card(s) will be terminated, and the corresponding balance will be credited to your payment balance; You will be unable to create new Virtual Dollar Card(s).”
The suspension was said to be as a result of an issue of update relayed to them by their Bartercard partner which said the card service will be unavailable for an extended period of time.
Flutterwave, however, said it would ensure the restoration of the service as soon as possible and further advised its customers to unlink their Dollar Card(s) from any recurring payments and replace them with another payment method.
Recall that the Fintech company had in August 2020 disclosed that they work with major card infrastructure partners to issue cards to their customers.
This development, however, has triggered reactions from the virtual card service users.
Some went to Twitter to share their concerns over the sudden announcement of the unavailability of the card starting from Sunday. Many decried the incessant dollar card challenges in Nigeria.
On Twitter, @jessedayusuf asked “PayDay and Barter, both having their virtual cards “temporarily unavailable. Has Nigeria been blacklisted?”
Edwin Ajogun described the news as a blow to Nigerian payments system when he stated that “Barter’s dollar cards will be unavailable from this Sunday, another blow to Nigerian payments.”
@onejoblessboy on Twitter also said “Barter removing the Dollar card feature just shows the state of the industry and may be by extension, the state of the nation. Remember PiggyVest also temporarily discontinued their Dollar Savings feature. Nigerians, wear your jeans!”
