Mastercard has announced a strategic partnership with Flowcart to integrate secure card payments directly into social and conversational commerce platforms, allowing consumers to discover products, place orders and complete transactions without leaving their chats. The partnership will launch in Kenya first, then expand across East Africa and other high-growth markets, including South Africa, Nigeria, and Côte d’Ivoire, with plans for wider adoption across Africa.
The new solution is designed to simplify online shopping by enabling customers to complete the entire purchasing journey within a single conversation. Rather than being redirected to external websites or applications, users can interact with merchants, select products and make payments through integrated chat-based experiences.
The development highlights the growing shift toward conversational commerce, where messaging and social platforms are becoming important channels for product discovery and sales. In Kenya, WhatsApp reportedly accounts for more than 20% of online shopping orders, surpassing traditional e-commerce websites as consumers increasingly turn to messaging platforms to interact with businesses.
By combining Flowcart’s AI-powered commerce orchestration platform with Mastercard’s global payment network, the partnership aims to help merchants increase transaction volumes, encourage repeat purchases and extend digital payment acceptance to underserved and informal businesses.
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Shehryar Ali, Senior Vice President and Country Manager for East Africa and Indian Ocean Islands at Mastercard, said the partnership reflects the changing way consumers discover and interact with brands. He noted that embedding secure payments into social-commerce experiences could create new opportunities for merchants while expanding digital payment acceptance across Africa’s rapidly evolving digital economy.
The solution will also support Kenya’s growing creator economy by allowing social sellers to monetize their audiences directly through the platforms where they already interact with customers. Through a complete “chat-to-pay” experience, merchants can move customers from product discovery to purchase and repeat transactions with fewer steps.
Payments can be completed within conversations through embedded payment links, QR codes or native checkout experiences powered by Mastercard Gateway and its network of acquiring partners. Mastercard Gateway provides merchants with a single connection for simplifying payment acceptance and supporting secure transactions across different markets and channels.
Ananth Gudipati, Founder of Flowcart, said the partnership will help businesses of different sizes from individual social sellers and SMEs to large enterprises—conduct commerce directly through social and messaging platforms.
For consumers, the solution offers a convenient in-chat payment experience, while tokenized card information can facilitate smoother repeat purchases. Merchants can also access digital commerce capabilities without necessarily requiring a dedicated website or conventional point-of-sale infrastructure.
The partnership comes as businesses increasingly seek simpler digital payment solutions. According to Mastercard’s 2026 SME Confidence Index, 80% of Kenyan SMEs consider simple, seamless and user-friendly payment methods an important requirement for future business growth.
The platform is also designed to integrate with existing commerce systems, allowing businesses of varying sizes to adopt the technology without completely changing their existing operations.
Overall, the Mastercard-Flowcart partnership brings together payment providers, fintechs, mobile network operators and commerce platforms to strengthen Africa’s digital commerce ecosystem. By bringing informal and creator-led businesses into digital payment networks, the initiative could further position social and messaging platforms as viable channels for end-to-end commerce and financial inclusion across the continent.
