LAGOS (Reuters) - Fintech company Flutterwave has teamed up with U.S. payments giant PayPal to enable PayPal customers pay African merchants through its platform, the Africa-focused payments firm said on Tuesday. The collaboration will connect small and medium enterprises with the more than 377 million PayPal account holders globally, Flutterwave said, eliminating the barrier to cross-border commerce. Flutterwave’s integration with PayPal will be operational across 50 African countries and worldwide, it said in a statement. Online payments got a boost with the COVID-19 pandemic as people rely on mobile apps for shopping and paying bills. Like other companies in the digital payments sector, San Jose, California-based PayPal has profited from the boom in online transactions that pushed more business into the virtual realm. Flutterwave has said it is positioning to be an African payment platform for multinationals entering new markets. Founded in 2016 by Nigerians and headquartered in San Francisco, the firm has processed over 140 million transactions. CEO and co-founder Olugbenga Agboola told Reuters last week that Flutterwave could consider a New York listing after it raised $170 million from investors to expand its customer base, pushing its valuation up to more than $1 billion.