Carry1st Refocuses on Commerce with Shop, Pay1st, Flow1st

In Short

• Carry1st says it has refocused the business around commerce products, Carry1st Shop, Pay1st, and Flow1st.
• Guillaume Noé, Carry1st VP of growth, said Flow1st is adding new distribution partners in Africa and beyond.
• Carry1st now combines Africa and the Middle East as one region.

What Happened: How Carry1st Is Building Around Commerce

Carry1st, a South Africa-based company, says it has spent the past 12 to 18 months focusing more on payments, online stores, and helping other companies sell games and in-game items across Africa and the Middle East.

In an interview, Carry1st VP of growth Guillaume Noé said the company has “refocused the company on our commerce platform.” He listed three products at the centre of that work, Carry1st Shop as its storefront, Pay1st as its proprietary payment gateway, and Flow1st as a new API solution.

An API is a software connection that lets one product talk to another, like a checkout plug-in for digital goods. Noé said Flow1st “allows any digital consumer platform to sell in-game items and currencies directly to their users.”

He also said distribution has “ramped up strongly,” and that Carry1st now has new partners “in Africa and beyond” selling games procured through the Flow1st API.

Why It Matters

Carry1st’s shift points to a bigger push to help game publishers and digital platforms sell across markets where payments and distribution can be hard.

The company also says it has expanded its scope to combine Africa and the Middle East, citing “deep player similarities” between North Africa and key GCC markets. In the same interview, Noé said access remains a challenge for many players, including the cost of mobile data, hurdles to payments, and games that do not offer localised pricing and local game servers.

Carry1st also said African studios will be judged on the same terms as any global partner, including gameplay, retention, and in app purchase potential.