Flutterwave is an African fintech company that was founded in 2016 to assist businesses in making and accepting payments from anywhere across Africa.
It is led by founder and CEO Olugbenga “GB” Agboola, flutter wave enables small to large businesses in Africa to conduct cross-border financial transactions via a single API. The company also helps businesses from outside Africa in expanding their operations on the continent. Booking.com, Flywire, and Uber are some of its international clients.
In 2021, Flutterwave launched a number of new products, including Flutterwave Market, which allows merchants to sell their products on an online marketplace and Send a remittance service that allows customers to send money to recipients in and out of Africa. Flutterwave has also partnered with leading global and pan-African technology and telecommunications companies such as PayPal, MTN, and Airtel Africa to drive financial inclusion on the continent and provide customers with limitless possibilities through its APIs.
The San Francisco-based and Lagos-based startup raised $170 million in a Series C round from Tiger Global and Avenir in March 2021, valuing the company at $1 billion. Flutterwave has raised a total of $475 million since its inception six years ago (it raised a $35 million Series B in 2020 and a $20 million Series A in 2018), confirming a Bloomberg scoop from October.
Flutterwave is currently the most valuable African startup, valued at $3 billion, surpassing SoftBank-backed fintech OPay and FTX-backed cross-border payments platform Chipper Cash, which were both valued at $2 billion last year.
The payments company is said to have completed 140 million transactions worth more than $9 billion. With infrastructure covering 34 African countries, the African payments giant is currently processing 200 million transactions worth more than $16 billion a year later.
The number of companies using the platform has risen as well. Flutterwave processes payments in 150 currencies and across payment types, including local and international cards, mobile wallets, bank transfers, and its consumer product Barter, which had 290,000 users in March 2021.
“It was intentional on our part because we saw the opportunities in the SMB space and like them require the same technology that the Ubers and Netflixes of this world use,” Agboola told TechCrunch. “Part of this is evident in how we’ve expanded the Flutterwave Store, which allows small businesses anywhere in Africa to set up an online e-commerce store for free.”