Fintech companies often spend millions to get noticed, but attracting attention is only half the battle. The harder test begins when customers must decide whether to trust a company with their money.

That, according to Yewande "Wendy" Akomolafe-Kalu, Flutterwave's Head of Marketing, is where marketing truly matters. With digital payments growing and competition intensifying, she argues that companies need to do more than list features — they must show how their products fit into daily life and consistently deliver on their promises.

"Brands are competing on trust now, but brands have always competed on trust," she said. "It is the basis of somebody choosing to try out your product, especially a money-based, finance-based product."

From explaining technology to telling stories

When fintech products first gained traction, companies had to explain what they did before they could convince anyone to use them. Customers had to grasp unfamiliar concepts and grow comfortable trusting technology they may never have encountered.

Akomolafe-Kalu recalled that even features like near-field communication (NFC), which enables contactless communication between devices, once required careful explanation. Marketing teams had to help people understand the technology and picture how it could fit into their daily routines or businesses.

That challenge has not disappeared — it has simply changed shape. Customers now face an abundance of fintech apps and are pickier than ever. They are not looking for a list of features; they want to know whether a product will actually solve their problem. That is why marketing, in her view, must shift from tech-talk to storytelling.

Rather than telling a small business owner that "our platform supports international transactions" — a phrase that means little to most people — marketers should show what that capability looks like in real life: a fashion seller in Lagos receiving payment from a customer in London in seconds, without worrying about exchange rates, bank codes or complicated steps.

The technology underneath still matters, she noted, but the customer's first question is simpler: will this make my life easier?

Holding on to an African identity

Building a global brand raises another challenge: how does a company like Flutterwave appeal to customers across different markets without losing what makes it distinctive? For Akomolafe-Kalu, the answer is to stay clear about the brand's identity while adapting its storytelling to local contexts.

"You have to stand for something as a brand. You need to know what your identity is and stick with it," she said.

For Flutterwave, that means carrying its African experience into international markets rather than downplaying it. At an international industry event in Las Vegas, for instance, the company should not adapt so completely to its surroundings that people forget its African roots. Instead, it can demonstrate how its understanding of African markets helps it serve businesses and customers.

The same principle applies when marketing in countries such as Uganda, the United States or the United Kingdom: a brand can adjust its examples and messaging for local audiences without abandoning its underlying identity. Akomolafe-Kalu sees being African as an advantage rather than a limitation. Companies, she said, should understand what their backgrounds and experience enable them to do differently, then communicate that value to the markets they want to reach.

Meeting customers where payments happen

Fintech marketing is also extending beyond traditional financial messaging into culture, entertainment and other parts of everyday life. Payments rarely happen in isolation, Akomolafe-Kalu explained. People buy concert tickets, pay for food at events, purchase merchandise from their favourite artists and send money to family while following major sporting competitions. These moments give fintech brands opportunities to connect with audiences where transactions already occur.

She pointed to Flutterwave's "Africa All the Way" campaign, built around football and the World Cup, which tapped into the excitement of the competition and African pride while linking that cultural moment to the ability to send money home.

The goal, she stressed, is not to attach a brand to every trending conversation, but to find a genuine connection between the audience, the moment and the service being offered.

Still, cultural relevance cannot compensate for a poor product. A memorable campaign may persuade someone to try a service, but a failed transaction or an unreliable experience can quickly undo that interest. Flutterwave's business and merchant stories, which feature businesses using its services, reflect this balance: they give merchants visibility while showing prospective customers how the platform works in real commercial settings.

"The storytelling helps people understand what it means in a real-life context," Akomolafe-Kalu said, adding that the product experience must support the story.

AI: faster, but not better

As artificial intelligence reshapes how marketing teams create content and understand audiences, Akomolafe-Kalu cautioned against treating it as a replacement for human creativity. AI can help teams work more efficiently, but marketing loses its effectiveness when it becomes generic or ignores the experiences of the people it is meant to reach.

"The ideation and the thinking and the context and the stories all come from human experience," she said.

AI can indeed accelerate a marketing team's work — drafting ideas, designing visuals, cutting videos in minutes. But speed alone does not sell. What makes a story stick is real life: knowing how it feels for a market trader when a payment fails at the worst moment, or how much it means for a small business owner to receive money from a customer abroad without stress. AI does not understand that worry, she argued. People do.

Her prescription: let AI handle the heavy lifting, but let humans lead with ideas, context and emotion. Otherwise, a campaign may look perfect and say nothing.

The road ahead

Looking forward, Akomolafe-Kalu believes the real test for fintech marketing will not be who shouts the loudest, but who follows through after capturing attention.

Flutterwave itself is a case in point. As the company grows beyond payments into areas such as embedded banking — banking services built directly into other apps — and open banking, which lets customers securely connect their accounts across platforms, it must explain all of it in plain, everyday language. The challenge, she said, is to talk about new technology without losing sight of the original promise: making it easier for ordinary people and businesses to move and use money.

In her view, brands that endure do three things: understand their customers, know what sets them apart, and deliver what they promise. For fintechs, that means trust is not won with a clever campaign — it is earned with every payment and every transaction. As Akomolafe-Kalu puts it, great marketing may win attention, but only a reliable product earns loyalty.