 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | FinTech |
| Founded | 2016 |
Key people | Olugbenga Agboola (CEO), Iyinoluwa Aboyeji |
| Website | flutterwave |
Flutterwave is an American fintech company that provides a payment infrastructure for global merchants and payment service providers across the continent. [1] [2]
The company was founded in 2016 by Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, Olugbenga Agboola, and Adeleke Adekoya and is headquartered in San Francisco, California with operations in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, South Africa, and seven other African countries. [3]
In 2021, Flutterwave raised a US$170 million Series C funding round. [4] At the time, this was the largest amount ever secured by an African tech startup and gave it a valuation of over US$1 billion, [5] making Flutterwave a unicorn. [3] Investors in Flutterwave include Y-Combinator, Visa Ventures, Mastercard, Avenir Growth Capital, and Tiger Global Management. [6] Flutterwave raised a US$250 million Series D funding round at over US$3 billion valuation in 2022 as well. [7]
In December 2021, Flutterwave launched Send, [8] an African-focused remittances service, and immediately appointed Nigerian Grammy Award-winning international musician, Ayodeji Ibrahim Balogun, popularly known as Wizkid as its global ambassador to further push the company's brand among the Africans in the diaspora. [9] [10]
In January 2022, Flutterwave partnered with AfroSport Network to broadcast the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations free-to-air from 9 January 2022 to 6 February 2022. [11]
At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Flutterwave built a digital store to help medium and small-scale businesses that were badly impacted by the global lockdown to display their products for market online. The store became a turnaround for these businesses that are mainly without digital footprints or without the means to integrate payment into their webpage. Over 20,000 businesses enrolled on the store for free through a campaign called "keeping the lights on". [12] [13]
On September 1, 2022, Bloomberg reported that the Central Bank of Nigeria had granted Flutterwave the country's highest payment processing license, which allows it to process transactions between banks and cards without intermediaries. The switching processing license grants Flutterwave autonomy across the payments ecosystem value chain. [14] This includes processing funds transfers between banks and fintechs, as well as participating in agency banking and other payment services. [15] [16] [17]
Kenyan central bank Governor Patrick Njoroge disclosed on July 28, 2022, after the Monetary Policy Committee meeting, that Flutterwave and Chipper have not been granted a licence to operate in the country. The clarification of Patrick followed an initial ruling by a Kenyan High Court on July 6, 2022, which froze all assets and accounts of Flutterwave in the country. [18]
Flutterwave, in an official response, disclosed that it submitted applications for licensing to the central bank of Kenya in 2019 but has yet to be granted one. [19] [20] [21]
In February 2023, a Kenyan court released $51.9 million belonging to Flutterwave after the Asset Recovery Agency of Kenya withdrew its case against the startup. [22]
In July 2022, a Kenyan High Court froze accounts held by Flutterwave holding over 6.2 billion Kenyan shilling based upon allegations that the funds were the proceeds of credit card fraud and money laundering after a request from Kenya's Assets Recovery Agency. [23] [24] [25] The company has denied accusations of financial misconduct. [25]
Kenya's Assets Recovery Agency withdrew the allegation of money laundering and fraud against Flutterwave. In a court order cited by Bloomberg, the agency absolved Flutterwave of any infringement. [26]
Flutterwave has been subject to multiple lawsuits and allegations for denying former employees stock rights as well as having a culture of bullying and harassment. [25] In response, the company stated it has taken action against individuals within the company responsible for harassment. [25]
On March 3, 2023, a Twitter user tweeted about a hack at Flutterwave. Two days later, on March 5, Flutterwave denied the TechPoint Africa report of a hack, stating that customers did not lose any funds. However, several sources told TechCabal that they lost funds and their accounts were frozen. The court documents seen by TechCabal included a petition by Flutterwave's legal counsel to the police, dated February 20, 2023. [27] . On February 8, 2024, TechCabal further published an exclusive report into how Flutterwave has been defrauded up to the tune of $24m through a court order secured to obtain return of such funds from over 6,000 Nigerian bank customers. [28]
Guaranty Trust Holding Company PLC also known as GTCO PLC is a multinational financial services group, that offers retail and investment banking, pension management, asset management and payments services, headquartered in Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria. GTCO Plc was created in July 2021 following the corporate reorganization of Guaranty Trust Bank PLC into a Holding Company.
Bain Capital Ventures LLC is the venture capital division within Bain Capital, which has approximately $160 billion of assets under management worldwide. The firm's early-stage investments have included Attentive, Bloomreach, Billtrust, Docusign, Flywire, LinkedIn, Justworks, Turbonomic, Rent the Runway, Twilio, Rapid7, and Redis. Bain Capital Ventures manages $10 billion of committed capital, has over 400 active portfolio companies, and has offices in New York City, Palo Alto, and San Francisco.
Stripe, Inc. is an Irish-American multinational financial services and software as a service (SaaS) company dual-headquartered in South San Francisco, California, United States and Dublin, Ireland. The company primarily offers payment-processing software and application programming interfaces for e-commerce websites and mobile applications.
SoFi Technologies, Inc. is an American online personal finance company and online bank. Based in San Francisco, SoFi provides financial products including student loan refinancing, mortgages, personal loans, credit card, investing, and banking through both mobile app and desktop interfaces.
Fintech, a clipped compound of "financial technology", refers to firms using new technology to compete with traditional financial methods in the delivery of financial services. Artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, and big data are regarded as the "ABCD" of fintech. The use of smartphones for mobile banking, investing, borrowing services, and cryptocurrency are examples of technologies designed to make financial services more accessible to the general public. Fintech companies consist of both startups and established financial institutions and technology companies trying to replace or enhance the usage of financial services provided by existing financial companies.
Paytm is an Indian multinational financial technology company, that specializes in digital payments and financial services, based in Noida, India. Paytm was founded in 2010 by Vijay Shekhar Sharma under One97 Communications. The company offers mobile payment services to consumers and enables merchants to receive payments through QR code payment, Payment Soundbox, Android based-payment terminal, and online payment gateway. In partnership with financial institutions, Paytm also offers financial services such as microloans and buy now, pay later to its consumers and merchants.
Revolut is a global neobank and financial technology company that offers banking services. Headquartered in London, it was founded in 2015 by Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko. It offers accounts featuring currency exchange, debit cards, virtual cards, Apple Pay, interest-bearing "vaults", stock trading, crypto, commodities, and other services.
Financial technology is an industry composed of companies that use technology to offer financial services. These companies operate in insurance, asset management and payment, and numerous other industries. FinTech has emerged as a relatively new industry in India in the past few years. The Indian market has witnessed massive investments in various sectors adopting FinTech, which has been driven partly by the robust and effective government reforms that are pushing the country towards a digital economy. It has also been aided by the growing internet and smartphone penetration, leading to the adoption of digital technologies and the rise of FinTech in the country
Nium is a Singapore-headquartered cross-border payments company. Initially founded by Prajit Nanu and Michael Bermingham, and launched as consumer-remittance platform Instarem in 2014. In 2016, the company introduced its B2B payments platform and rebranded as Nium in 2019, subsequently elevating Pratik Gandhi to co-founder in 2021.
Pine Labs is an Indian company that provides financing and retail transaction technology. Founded in 1998, it is a unicorn startup, with a valuation of over US$5 billion.
Chime Financial, Inc. is a San Francisco–based financial technology company that partners with regional banks to provide certain fee-free mobile banking services. The company offers early access to paychecks, negative account balances without overdraft fees, high-yield savings accounts, peer-to-peer payments, and an interest-free secured credit card. Chime earns the majority of its revenue from the collection of interchange fees on debit card transactions.
Kuda, also known as Kuda Technologies, is a fintech company operating in Nigeria and the UK. It was founded by Babs Ogundeyi and Musty Mustapha in 2019.
Guillaume Pousaz is a Dubai-based Swiss-born billionaire entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. He is the CEO and founder of payment platform Checkout.com. As of April 2023, he has an estimated net worth of US$7.2 billion according to Forbes magazine.
Airwallex is a multinational financial technology company offering financial services and software as a service (SaaS). Founded in 2015 in Melbourne, Australia and currently based in Singapore, the company is a financial technology platform providing cross-border payments and financial services to businesses through a proprietary banking network and its API. It also provides services and products such as business accounts, expense cards, and payroll, among others. It was Australia's third technology unicorn company overall. With a valuation of US$5.5 billion, as of 2022, the company processed $50 billion in annualized transactions.
Bolt Financial Inc. (Bolt) is an American financial technology start-up that provides merchants with software to facilitate one-click online checkouts. It was founded in 2014 in San Francisco.
Paystack is a Nigerian financial technology company that offers payment processing services to businesses and was acquired by Irish-American financial services company Stripe for $200M in 2020. Its headquarters is located in Lagos, Nigeria.
Kora is a pan-African payment infrastructure company headquartered in Canada with offices in Nigeria and the United Kingdom. The fintech company enables local and global businesses to accept payins, make payouts, and get settled across popular payment channels across Africa.
Stitch is a fintech company operating in Africa providing open banking and payment products. The company's headquarters are located in Cape Town, South Africa.
Moniepoint Inc., is a fintech company founded by Tosin Eniolorunda and Felix Ike in 2015 focusing on providing financial solutions for businesses.