SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 21, 2020 — Flutterwave, a San Francisco-based payments technology company with operations in Africa, today announced that it has closed a $35m Series B from a consortium of strategic investors. The round was co-led by Grey Croft & eVentures from with additional participation from CRE Ventures, FIS, Visa, Green Visor, Endeavor, Fintech Collective, 9 Yards Capital, 4DX Ventures, and YCVC.
Flutterwave connects the African continent to the world at large by providing the easiest and most reliable payment solutions for businesses around the globe. To date, Flutterwave has processed 100 million transactions valued at over $5.4 billion for global leaders including Uber and Booking.com.
“We’re helping businesses in Africa and globally accept payment and to scale by being the payment technology that connects Africa to the world,” says Flutterwave founder and CEO, Olugbenga “GB” Agboola. “We have built a technology infrastructure that is steadily being recognized as the bridge to connect the payment system. We are excited to be working with our newest commercial partners, Visa and FIS, and investors to build the dominant payments platform in Africa.”
With the latest round of funding, Flutterwave will continue to provide innovative solutions to businesses that want to facilitate payments seamlessly. The company’s core offering provides a frictionless payment solution for merchants, banks, and consumers by simplifying how payments are made and accepted.
The new funding will be used to support its expansion across Francophone and North Africa as part of its mission to connect Africa to the world as well as drive efforts to strengthen Flutterwave’s position in places where it currently operates.
“Commerce across the African continent is quickly moving online. Flutterwave is powering this transition by introducing modern payment infrastructure to Africa’s merchants while also creating the ability for global companies to reach over 1 billion African customers,” says Will Szczerbiak, Principle at Greycroft. “We have supported the company since investing in their 2016 seed and are excited to lead the Series B after seeing over 500% revenue growth in 2019.”
On the back of the latest round of funding, Flutterwave has signed commercial agreements with Visa and FIS. The agreement with FIS will allow the global financial technology provider to offer the Flutterwave solution as part of Worldpay from FIS payment solutions to its merchant clients in Africa. Flutterwave is a 2016 graduate of the FIS FinTech Accelerator program.
In its new Visa partnership, Flutterwave will further scale its consumer payment service, Barter, and its merchant acquiring service, Rave, through Visa products such as Visa Direct, Visa QR and virtual card. This will drive additional utility to the 85,000 businesses and rapidly growing base of Barter users on Flutterwave’s platform today. Ultimately, the partnership will help extend access for African consumers to digital commerce and to the rest of the world.
“GB and his colleagues have not only identified but continue to successfully and thoughtfully execute upon, a once in a generation opportunity in commerce and payments for the emerging markets of Africa,” says Joe Saunders, a member of the Company’s board and the former CEO of Visa. “We’re excited to continue to lend our support to this exceptional team of founders.”
About Flutterwave
Founded in 2016, Flutterwave enables its customers to build customizable payment applications through its APIs. It has processed 100 million transactions valued at over $5.4 billion since its inception. Existing customers include Uber and Booking.com. The company has an active presence in 10 (ten) African countries, including Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa. For more information on Flutterwave’s journey and a look at their success in 2019, please visit: https://2019.flutterwave.com/
About Greycroft
Greycroft is a seed-to-growth venture capital firm that partners with exceptional entrepreneurs to build the world’s most transformative companies. We have deep experience in both consumer and enterprise technology, with a portfolio that spans the globe. We value building enduring relationships with founders and appreciate that they need more than just capital. Greycroft works as a team to support and advise entrepreneurs, empowering them to execute on their vision. We manage more than $1.5 billion in capital and have made over 300 investments, including Acorns, App Annie, Axios, Bird, Braintree, Bright Health, Buddy Media, Huffington Post, Icertis, Plated, Scopely, Shipt, TheRealReal, Thrive Market, Trunk Club, and Venmo. For more information: www.greycroft.com
About e.ventures
Founded in 1999, e.ventures is the first tech-enabled global venture capital firm and invests in consumer and software companies at their inflection points from early to growth stage. The firm is headquartered in San Francisco and Berlin with global partners in Beijing, Tokyo, and São Paulo. e.ventures has combined its extensive, truly global network with local experience and insight to partner with over 200 startups globally. Notable US investments including Sonos, Angi, TheRealReal, Shipt, Segment, NGINX, GoPuff, and Acorns, among many others, and notable European investments include FarFetch, Deposit Solutions, CityDeal/Groupon, Natural Cycles, Staffbase, Exporo, Blinkist, and Asana Rebel.
About FIS
FIS is a leading provider of technology solutions for merchants, banks and capital markets firms globally. Our 55,000 people are dedicated to advancing the way the world pays, banks and invests by applying our scale, deep expertise and data-driven insights. We help our clients use technology in innovative ways to solve business-critical challenges and deliver superior experiences for their customers. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, FIS is a Fortune 500® company and a member of Standard & Poor’s 500® Index. To learn more, visit www.fisglobal.com. Follow FIS on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (@FISGlobal).