African Fintech company Flutterwave has tripled it’s valuation with a newly raised $250 million Series D round. The payment company is now worth over $3 billion in just twelve months.
The Series D round had in participation lead investor B Capital Group and other participating investors like Alta Park Capital, Whale Rock Capital, and Lux Capital. Existing investors such as Avenir Growth, Tiger Global, Glynn Capital, Green Visor and Salesforce Ventures also doubled down
What you should know about Flutterwave valuation
At $3 billion, Flutterwave is currently the most valuable startup in Africa, surpassing the $2 billion valuation set by SoftBank-backed fintech company OPay and FTX-backed cross-border payments platform Chipper Cash in 2021. Also leaving behind Other African tech unicorns like Andela, Wave and Interswitch behind.
Flutterwave is a One-stop payment platform that allows businesses to sell wherever their customers are either online, in‑person, anywhere in the world, and everywhere in-between with a click of a button.
Led by founder and CEO Olugbenga “GB” Agboola, the payment company was founded in 2016 by a team of ex-bankers, entrepreneurs and engineers to build a powerful, reliable and intelligent cross-border payments gateway for merchants in Africa.
The payment platform is equipped with financial technology services like Debit and Credit Cards, Bank Account, Mobile Money, POS
M-Pesa, Visa QR, Bank Transfer and USSD. So far it has partnered with leading global and pan-African tech and telecommunication companies such as PayPal, MTN, Airtel Africa to drive financial inclusion on the continent
Flutterwave has experienced enormous growth since it became a unicorn last year. At the time, the payments company said it processed 140 million transactions worth over $9 billion. A year later, the African payments giant, with an infrastructure reach across 34 countries on the continent, now processes 200 million transactions worth more than $16 billion.
But that’s not all, the number of businesses currently using the Flutterwave platform has also increased. In March 2021, it was 290,000; now, 900,000 businesses globally use Flutterwave to process payments in 150 currencies and across different payment modes: local and international cards, mobile wallets, bank transfers and its consumer product Barter.
The Flutterwave Store, launched In April 2020 and rejig in November to become Flutterwave Market now has over 30,000 merchants on the e-commerce platform.
In December, Flutterwave launched another product called Send, a remittance service that allows users to send money to recipients to and from Africa with ease.
Send has now become Flutterwaves fastest growing product processing 4,729 transactions, with total payments volume crossing $3.59 million in its first full month of launch.
What they are saying
Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola, Founder and CEO of Flutterwave, said
“Our story is that of resilience and hard work. Our growth so far is due to the support of our customers, our partners, the banks, the public, the regulators, and importantly our people.
The Central Bank of Nigeria, under the leadership of Dr. Godwin Emefiele, laid the vision of a transformational Payment System in Nigeria, provided the framework for innovation in this space, and has continued to create regulations that have enabled us to grow and thrive. We are grateful to them and to all the other Central Banks in all the countries where we operate.
We set out to build a platform that simplifies payments for everyone and today, our solutions are used across the globe to connect Africans to the world and the world to Africans.
We are delighted that investors believe in us and our story and are committing their resources to this belief. This latest funding demonstrates the conviction of some of the world’s leading investors in both our business model, team and the Africa technology market. It gives Flutterwave the much-needed support to deliver on our plans to provide the best experience for our merchants and customers around the world.”
Also speaking about the round Matt Levinson, Partner at B Capital said,
“At B Capital, we seek to back generational companies with broad platform potential. Flutterwave has a unique opportunity to accomplish this as the dominant payments infrastructure provider across Africa.
In addition to their emergence as the leading enterprise payments processor for the continent, Flutterwave is innovating at breakneck speed with novel fintech solutions for large corporations, SMEs and consumers.
I’ve had the pleasure of backing this world-class team since 2017 and couldn’t be more thrilled that B Capital is leading their Series D. Flutterwave may ultimately build one of the most consequential fintech business in the world, enabling hundreds of thousands of merchants to transact online and connect Africa to the global economy.”
Also speaking David Glynn, Managing Partner of Glynn Capital, said:
“We believe the digitization of payments globally is one of the largest and most important trends in technology. Having been investors in Flutterwave since 2017, we have had a front row seat in seeing Flutterwave establish itself as a leading payments company in Africa as it drives adoption of seamless digital payments experiences for merchants and consumers alike.
We look forward to supporting the company as it addresses its significant growth opportunity in the years ahead.”
What’s next for Flutterwave?
According to the CEO, speaking on what’s next for Flutterwave, he said in the future, Flutterwave will look at expanding into more territories and acquisitions that will further consolidate its authority in the fintech space. He said the company will develop complementary products while encouraging new innovations in its products and services development.
“We plan to grow inorganically through acquisitions, and it will happen when we find a fit and see a company with the same core values or culture and goal of making payments simpler across emerging markets. So we still have plans for that,” said the chief executive, who has also backed several startups personally and more recently through the newly launched $200 million pan-African fund Norrsken22.
Also speaking about IPO, Agboola said.
“At the moment, no IPO, “The goal is to continue to grow and scale. But obviously, we plan to be IPO-ready from a maturity perspective, which means continue to build the infrastructure, cross our Ts and dot our Is if we choose to go that route.”
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