Nigerian Payments Company Flutterwave Raises $170m, Now Valued at Over $1bn

The proliferation of fintech services across Africa remains in full swing as investors remain bullish about the opportunities that abound in the sector.

Flutterwave, African-focused payments company has announced that it has closed a $170 million Series C round, valuing the company over $1 billion.

 

According to Techcrunch, the funding round was led by New York-based private investment firm Avenir Growth Capital and US hedge fund and investment firm Tiger Global.

New and existing investors who participated in this round include DST Global, Early Capital Berrywood, Green Visor Capital, Greycroft Capital, Insight Ventures, PayPal, Salesforce Ventures, Tiger Management, Worldpay FIS 9yards Capital.

The new funding will be used to speed up customer acquisition in its present markets. It will also improve existing product offerings like Barter, where it has over 500,000 users, and introduce new offerings.

One of the new offerings is the Flutterwave Mobile, according to the founder, Flutter Mobile will turn merchants’ mobile devices into a point of sale, allowing them to accept payments and make sales.”

Launched in 2016 by Iyinoluwa Aboyeji and Ologunro Agboola as a Nigerian and US-based payments company with offices in Lagos and San Francisco, Flutterwave helps businesses build customizable payments applications through its APIs.

Last year, the company closed its $35 million Series Band had processed 107 million transactions worth $5.4 billion. These numbers have increased impressively since then. Now, the company has processed over 140 million transactions worth more than $9 billion with an impressive clientele of international companies, including Booking.com, Facebook, Flywire, and Uber.

Flutterwave noted that more than 290,000 businesses use its platform to carry out payments and they can do so in 150 currencies and multiple payment modes including local and international cards, mobile wallets, bank transfers, Barter by Flutterwave.

In a statement made to Reuters by the CEO, he noted that they may consider listing in New York or possible dual listing in New York and Nigeria.

This is coming just a few months after being listed as Ycombinators’ most valuable startup in Africa. Flutterwave joins Interswitch as the only fintech in Nigeria to reach a 1-billion-dollar valuation in less than 10 years making it a Unicorn. Interswitch first became a unicorn after Visa acquired a 20% stake in 2019.

Flutterwave has raised $225 million in total and is one of the few African startups to have secured more than $200 million in funding.

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