With the world rapidly becoming a global village, where businesses and other activities are carried out by individuals millions of miles apart, there was a need to connect Africa to this global community and bridge the gap between Africa and the rest of the world.
In time past fund transactions between Africa and other part of the world was best considered as a “tug of war” as transactions were required to take days, weeks and even months to be completed. Potential Investors saw the Africa’s economy though viable, but too expensive to invest or do business. This problem gave birth to the Flutterwave solution.
Flutterwave, is a payment Application programming interface (API) that makes it seamlessly easy for businesses and banks to process payments across Africa. The service allows consumers to pay for goods and services in their local currency; while Flutterwave takes care of integrating banks and payment-service providers into its platform so businesses don't have to take on the expense and burden.
It is a technology company aimed at driving growth for banks and businesses across Africa through digital payments. It provides technology, infrastructure and services to enable global merchants, payment service providers and Pan African banks accept and process payments on any channel (Web, Mobile, ATM & POS).
Flutterwave was founded on the principle that every African must be able to participate and thrive in the global economy. To achieve this objective, the Flutterwave solution was built a trusted payment infrastructure that allows consumers and businesses (African and International) make and receive payments in a convenient borderless manner.
Founded in 2016 by Iyinoluwa Aboyeji and Olugbenga Agboola, these being the main founders but were supported by ex-bankers, entrepreneurs and engineers, who provided this award-winning technology core needed to provide business all around the world a powerful, reliable and intelligent payments gateway. In 2018 Iyinoluwa Aboyeji relinquished the position of CEO to Olugbenga Agboola as he left Flutterwave to focus on his family.
To make it easier for Africans to build global businesses that can make and accept any payment, anywhere from across Africa and around the world.
To inspire a new wave of prosperity across Africa by building payments infrastructure to connect Africa to the global economy.
The HQ is located in San Francisco with offices in Lagos, Nairobi, Accra, and Johannesburg.
Rave by Flutterwave is a service that enables businesses accepts global payments from card, bank accounts and USSD.
RAVE has been integrated into a number of online websites and platforms such as
Megabet, an online gaming service, which entered the Nigerian scene and reached out to Flutterwave to be one of their payment technology partners. Megabet integrated RavePay into both their app and website, allowing their customers to pay using their Visa, Mastercard and Verve cards or their bank accounts.
Barter is a mobile app by Flutterwave that helps individuals manage their day to day payments and financial transactions.
Its notification and reminder features takes the headache and stress of remembering essential payment due dates. This gives us time to focus on other matters.
BUSINESSES THAT USE FLUTTERWAVE
Below are a few clients that ran their day to day businesses with the Flutterwave solution.
Uber, Flywire,Booking.com, transferwise, but to mention a few.
A few investor that have supported the vision of this solution are listed below;
Y Combinator, Greycroft Partners, Glynn Capital Management, Green Visor Capital, VC FinTech Accelerator, CRE Venture Capital, Zillionize Angel, HOF Capital, Arab Angel Fund, Lynett Capital.
INVESTMENTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS
The tie between Flutterwave and Alipay would be considered as one of their greatest achievement as this opens the way for African businesses to have access to more than a billion potential customers.
At the end of the year 2018, Flutterwave witnessed a 550% growth in customer base on rave and 30,000 users on Bartar .
Flutterwave saw the welcoming of former CEO of Visa, Joseph Saunders to its board of Directors.
In 2018, Flutterwave was awarded the ‘Best Payments Company’ award at the Ghana eCommerce Awards ceremony among other awards.
In 2017, Flutterwave raised A round of funding of $10 million. Investors at that time were Greycroft and Partners Green Visor.
In 2018 it completed an extension of its Series A funding round of $20 million, with participation from global payments company MasterCard, 4DX Ventures, CRE Ventures, Fintech Collective, and Raba Capital, among others.
With Flutterwave running as the backbone of many businesses today, one can boldly say the future of the Africa economy is very bright because the future of fund transaction is already here today.
