Paystack or Flutterwave: which should your startup use?

On Paystack a local payment costs 1.5% plus ₦100. Under ₦2,500 they drop the ₦100. And no single payment ever costs you more than ₦2,000, even a big one. Cards from abroad cost 3.9% plus ₦100.¹

Flutterwave's page for Nigeria says 2% on local payments. That's 1.4% for the transaction and 0.6% they call a platform fee. There's no cap on the page. Foreign cards are 4.8%, and Flutterwave adds 7.5% VAT on top of its fees.²

The 2% is recent. It went up from 1.4% on 11 April 2025. The rise hit cards, bank transfer, USSD, Pay with Bank, OPay and NQR, so every naira method.³

Say you sell a ₦2,000 monthly plan. Paystack takes ₦30, because the ₦100 is waived. Flutterwave takes ₦40, plus VAT on that.^{1 2}

A ₦5,000 order costs ₦175 on Paystack and ₦100 on Flutterwave. Flutterwave wins this one. Paystack's flat ₦100 hurts on small orders, so from ₦2,500 up to about ₦15,000 Flutterwave usually comes out cheaper, VAT included.

Now a ₦200,000 invoice for a school's yearly software licence. Paystack's sum comes to ₦3,100, but the cap holds it at ₦2,000. Flutterwave's 2% is ₦4,000 before VAT. Big invoices are where the ₦2,000 cap really pays for itself.

Run your own average order through both before you decide. Five minutes with a calculator beats any comparison table, this one included.

Money from a Nigerian customer lands in your bank the next working day on either one. Paystack says it does this for free.¹ Flutterwave is also next day for naira, but a payment from a foreign card takes five working days, or up to seven if a weekend or public holiday falls in the middle.⁴

Paying money out costs exactly the same. ₦10 to send up to ₦5,000, ₦25 up to ₦50,000, ₦50 for anything bigger.^{1 2} So if you pay riders or tutors from your balance every Friday, don't let that decide it.

Want dollars? Paystack will only settle them into a Zenith Bank dollar account, and someone there checks it within about 24 hours.⁸

Lots of projects take their first payment long before the founder has been near CAC. Paystack's answer is a Starter Business. You give your BVN and ID and get paid into your own personal account.⁶ You can collect up to ₦8 million in total, and after that payments switch off until you upgrade to a Registered Business. Starters can't send Transfers, either.⁵

Flutterwave has a Starter account too. It wants your BVN, your NIN slip, a website or social media page, and proof of address like an electricity meter number. For a business name or a limited company it asks for the CAC papers.⁷

Either way you can sell to real people this month. If it takes off, register. ₦8 million sounds like a lot until forty customers are paying you ₦20,000 every month.

Paystack is simple to start with. One fee, one cap and clear docs. If your customers are in Lagos, Ibadan or Port Harcourt and pay by card or transfer, it covers what you need.

Flutterwave is built for many countries, and its settlement schedule runs country by country down a long page.⁴ If you sell to customers in Ghana, Kenya or francophone West Africa as well as Nigeria, check which currencies each provider will collect for your account. That is often the deciding reason.

You can also use both. Some teams keep Paystack for naira and Flutterwave for other countries. It adds a second dashboard and a second set of reports to reconcile each month, so only do it when the savings or reach are real.

Who pays you, and from where? Mostly Nigeria points to Paystack. Many countries point to Flutterwave.

How big is a normal payment? Under ₦2,500 or above about ₦15,000, Paystack is usually cheaper. In between, Flutterwave can be.

Are you registered yet? If not, check the Starter limits on each, and know what happens when you reach them.

Do you need to pay people out from the same account? Paystack Starter accounts can't, so register first or choose the account type that allows it.⁵

Do you want customers to see the fee? Flutterwave's default is to charge customers the fee, and you can change that in Fee Settings.^{2 3} Most people would rather see one clean price.

On Prow: Posting your project on Prow is free. When customers pay you through Paystack or Flutterwave, you can send Prow screenshots of your dashboard. A person at Prow checks them, and your project page then shows your last 30 days of revenue as checked by Prow. Prow never asks for your Paystack or Flutterwave keys, because keys can move money. Only revenue read straight from Stripe counts as Verified on the leaderboard. If you later sell, listing costs a one-off fee (Early-stage ₦10,000, Basic ₦25,000), and when it sells you and the buyer each pay Prow 1.5%, at least ₦5,000 each. The money is held in escrow with EscrowPay, whose own fee is split between you.

• You've worked out the fee on your own average payment, on both.
• You know whether most of your customers are in Nigeria or spread across Africa.
• You've picked an account type that fits whether you're registered yet.
• You know the Starter limits and what happens when you reach them.
• You've decided who pays the fee, you or the customer.
• You've checked both pricing pages this month, because fees change.