name: Flutterwave Vocabulary
providerId: flutterwave
created: '2026-05-24'
modified: '2026-05-24'
description: Domain vocabulary for the Flutterwave for Business (F4B) v4 platform. Captures core concepts, payment
  rails, payout rails, and ancillary services used across the API surface.
tags:
  - Payments
  - Payouts
  - Mobile Money
  - Cards
  - Africa
  - Fintech
concepts:
  - term: Charge
    description: A request to collect money from a customer via a specific payment method.
    examples: [card charge, mobile money charge, bank transfer charge]
  - term: Customer
    description: A person or business that owns charges, orders, and transfers on the merchant account.
  - term: Order
    description: A server-side cart object that bundles line items and a customer for a checkout session.
  - term: Payment Method
    description: A tokenised representation of how a customer pays — card, mobile money, bank transfer, USSD, or OPay.
  - term: Orchestrator
    description: A helper endpoint that creates the customer, payment method, and charge (or order, or transfer) in one
      atomic call.
  - term: Transfer
    description: A payout from the merchant balance to a recipient's bank account, mobile wallet, or wallet account.
  - term: Recipient
    description: The destination of a payout — identified by bank account, mobile money number, or wallet account.
  - term: Sender
    description: The KYC'd originator of a cross-border payout (regulator-mandated for remittance corridors).
  - term: Settlement
    description: An aggregate of successful charges netted against fees and paid out to the merchant's settlement account.
  - term: Refund
    description: A reversal of all or part of a previously successful charge.
  - term: Chargeback
    description: A customer-initiated dispute that reverses a charge until evidence is provided.
  - term: Virtual Account
    description: A bank account number (NUBAN) issued to a customer or merchant for collecting bank transfer payments.
  - term: Wallet
    description: A multi-currency balance held by the merchant on Flutterwave.
  - term: Fee
    description: The Flutterwave-computed charge applied to a transaction.
  - term: Idempotency
    description: A guarantee that retried POST requests with the same `X-Idempotency-Key` produce the same response.
  - term: Encryption
    description: Client-side AES-256 encryption of sensitive card fields with a 12-character nonce.
payment_rails:
  - id: card
    name: Card Payments
    description: Visa, Mastercard, Verve, AMEX (where available).
  - id: mobile_money
    name: Mobile Money
    description: M-Pesa (Kenya, Tanzania), MTN MoMo (multiple), Airtel Money, Tigo, Vodafone Cash.
  - id: bank_transfer
    name: Pay With Bank Transfer
    description: NGN virtual NUBAN-based collection.
  - id: ussd
    name: USSD
    description: Offline payment via mobile network USSD strings.
  - id: opay
    name: OPay Wallet
    description: Collect from OPay wallet balances.
  - id: qr
    name: Visa QR
    description: QR-code-based payment.
payout_rails:
  - id: bank_account
    name: Bank Account Transfer
    description: Domestic and cross-border bank account credits.
  - id: mobile_money
    name: Mobile Money Transfer
    description: Payouts to mobile wallets.
  - id: wallet_to_wallet
    name: Wallet-to-Wallet
    description: Movement between Flutterwave wallets.
geographies:
  africa:
    - Nigeria
    - Cameroon
    - Egypt
    - Ghana
    - Ivory Coast
    - Kenya
    - Malawi
    - Mauritius
    - Rwanda
    - Senegal
    - South Africa
    - Tanzania
    - Uganda
    - Zambia
  global:
    - United Kingdom
    - United States
    - European Union
ancillary_services:
  - name: Card Issuing
    description: Virtual card creation for cardholder programs.
  - name: KYC
    description: Identity verification APIs.
  - name: Bill Payments
    description: Airtime, data, electricity, cable TV bill payments.
  - name: Send App
    description: Consumer-facing remittance app.
  - name: Swap
    description: Currency exchange between NGN, USD, EUR, GBP.
  - name: Afritickets
    description: Event ticketing platform.
  - name: Market
    description: Online marketplace.
  - name: Disha
    description: Free creator website builder.
  - name: Store
    description: Free ecommerce store builder.
  - name: Tuition
    description: School fee payments.