Flutterwave Raises $250M In Series D Funding, Pushing Its Valuation To Over $3B

Nigeria’s fintech company Flutterwave has raised $250 million in Series D funding pushing its valuation to over $3 billion and making it the highest valued African start-up.

Flutterwave’s latest backers include some of the world’s most respected investors led by B Capital Group, and with participation from Alta Park Capital, Whale Rock Capital, Lux Capital, among others. Several existing investors who also participated in previous rounds also followed this round, including, Glynn Capital, Avenir Growth, Tiger Global, Green Visor Capital, Salesforce Ventures.

In a statement, the company said, “the new funds will drive its ambitious expansion plan to accelerate customer acquisition in existing markets and growth through mergers and acquisitions, and developing complementary products while encouraging new innovations in its products and services development”.

According to the company, it has processed over 200M transactions worth over $16B to date across 34 countries in Africa since its formation in 2016. It says the brand now serves over 900,000 businesses across the globe.

In 2021, Flutterwave launched a range of new products including Flutterwave Market for merchants to sell their goods via an online marketplace and, most recently, Send, a remittance service that empowers customers to seamlessly send money to recipients to and from Africa.

The company has also partnered with leading global and pan-African technology and telecommunication companies such as PayPal, MTN, Airtel Africa to drive financial inclusion on the continent and create endless possibilities for customers who can build customisable payment applications through its APIs.

Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola, Founder and CEO of Flutterwave, said “Our story is that of resilience and hard work. Our growth so far is due to the support of our customers, our partners, the banks, the public, the regulators, and importantly our people. We are delighted that investors believe in us and our story and are committing their resources to this belief. This latest funding demonstrates the conviction of some of the world’s leading investors in both our business model, team and the Africa technology market. It gives Flutterwave the much-needed support to deliver on our plans to provide the best experience for our merchants and customers around the world.”

Matt Levinson, Partner at B Capital said, “At B Capital, we seek to back generational companies with broad platform potential. Flutterwave has a unique opportunity to accomplish this as the dominant payments infrastructure provider across Africa. In addition to their emergence as the leading enterprise payments processor for the continent, Flutterwave is innovating at breakneck speed with novel fintech solutions for large corporates, SMEs and consumers. Flutterwave may ultimately build one of the most consequential fintech business in the world, enabling hundreds of thousands of merchants to transact online and connect Africa to the global economy.”

David Glynn, Managing Partner of Glynn Capital, said: “We believe the digitization of payments globally is one of the largest and most important trends in technology. Having been investors in Flutterwave since 2017, we have had a front row seat in seeing Flutterwave establish itself as a leading payments company in Africa as it drives adoption of seamless digital payments experiences for merchants and consumers alike. We look forward to supporting the company as it addresses its significant growth opportunity in the years ahead.”

This latest fundraising has seen Flutterwave’s valuation more than triple since its last funding round in March last year when it became one of Africa’s fastest-growing Unicorn.