Read How Young Nigerians Built Flutterwave, A $1 Billion Silicon Valley-Based Tech Firm

 

Congratulations are in order for Nigerian payments technology company, Flutterwave, which recently clinched a $170m grant, raising the fortunes of the company to over $1bn within a space of less than five years.

The story of Flutterwave broke the Internet a couple of weeks ago, inspiring many youths to consider careers in the financial technology space.

Launched in 2016 by Olugbenga Agboola, fondly referred to as GB, Flutterwave, with its operational head office in Lagos State and its corporate headquarters in San Francisco, the company rapidly grew in such a short time, leaving many wondering about the vast opportunities that abound in the fintech ecosystem in Nigeria.

The company, now valued at $1bn, helps businesses build customisable payments applications through its Application Programming Interface. The company’s technology-based payment solutions focus on the African market. It plugs technology into the ecosystem players such as the banks, telecommunication companies and other players that are looking to accept or make payments.

Unlike other bigwigs in the fintech space in Africa such as Interswitch; publicly-traded African e-commerce company Jumia and Egyptian payments company Fawry, which took more than 10 years to reach a billion-dollar valuation, Flutterwave achieved the status quickly in less than five years.

Speaking with Sunday PUNCH, Flutterwave Investor Relations and Business Manager, Kanyinsola Ajibade, narrated the billion-dollar journey of the company started by a team of ex-bankers, entrepreneurs and engineers led by Agboola.

She said, “We started with Uber, which was our major customer, and is still one of our major markets. From Uber, we have grown to become one of the major payment service providers across all of Africa, which is really awesome and has shown the growth in which we have been able to build our business and the trust that mobile companies have placed in our business for us to deliver excellent services.

“We process payments for over 200,000 merchants that use our API, including the likes of Uber. Our payment infrastructure covers over 33 countries.

“One thing that we have always stuck to is to simplify payment and we started reconnecting financial infrastructure in Nigeria by building our technology into all the financial institutions in the market. This was easy for us to do because the banks wouldn’t talk to each other.”