Flutterwave has become Nigeria’s largest financial institution after raising $250M at Valuation of $3B
Flutterwave, an African fintech, has secured $250 million in a Series D round, bringing its worth to almost $3 billion in just twelve months.
The San Francisco-based and Lagos-based startup raised $170 million in a Series C investment from Tiger Global and Avenir in March 2021, valuing the company at $1 billion. Flutterwave has raised a total of $475 million since its founding 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, founded in 2016 by Olugbenga Agboola and Iyinoluwa Aboyeji and based in San Francisco, California, offers a variety of services ranging from card issuing and maintenance to flexible loans.
Its goal is to facilitate and harness Africa’s expanding payments business, which is being fueled by greater mobile phone use and improved internet speeds.
The current round of funding was led by B Capital Group of the United States, with support from Alta Park Capital and Whale Rock Capital. Existing investors Salesforce Ventures, Tiger Global, Green Visor Capital, and Glynn Capital also took part.
Flutterwave has spent the last five years on a quest to provide customers and businesses in Africa and emerging countries with limitless possibilities. To date, the company has supported over 900,000 businesses in 34 African nations, processing over 200 million transactions worth over $16 billion. Flutterwave plans to use the Series D capital to accelerate client acquisition and growth through mergers and acquisitions, as well as develop supplementary technologies.
Since TechCrunch published Flutterwave’s unicorn round last year, the company has grown at an exponential rate. The payments company claimed to have processed 140 million transactions worth $9 billion at the time. After a year, the African payments behemoth has grown to execute 200 million transactions worth more than $16 billion across 34 nations on the continent.
The number of companies that use its platform has also grown. It was 290,000 in March 2021; now, 900,000 businesses utilize Flutterwave to process payments in 150 currencies and across many payment modalities, including local and international cards, mobile wallets, bank transfers, and Barter, the company’s consumer product.
With this investment, Flutterwave has become the most valuable African start-up. It is a testament to Africa’s brilliance, inventiveness, and young people who inspire others. It’s also a big vote of confidence in Africa’s commercial, innovation, and technological scene.
Flutterwave debuted a number of new products in 2021, including Flutterwave Market, which allows merchants to sell their items on an online marketplace, and Send, a remittance service that allows users to send money to receivers in and out of Africa. Flutterwave has also teamed with prominent global and pan-African technology and telecommunications firms such as PayPal, MTN, and Airtel Africa to advance financial inclusion across the continent and provide clients with limitless possibilities through its APIs.