Flutterwave, an integrated payments technology platform currently funded by 25 investors but founded in 2016 by Andela co-founder Iyin Aboyeji along with Olugbenga Agboola has revolutionized the way African businesses connect to the global economy. The company which is Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) certified, was part of the summer 2016 batch at Y Combinator, an American seed accelerator that launched in 2005 and has been instrumental in launching start-up companies including Dropbox, Airbnb, Stripe, Reddit, Optimizely, Docker, Heroku.
Africa is not a country, but flutter wave aims at making sure doing business anywhere in her feel like one through its payments API that makes it easier for banks and businesses to process payments across the continent allowing consumers pay for products and services in their local currency. With their headquarters in San Francisco and African offices in Accra, Johannesburg, Lagos and Nairobi, Flutterwave has made it easier for businesses run in Africa to compete globally in no small measure.
All of this sounds great on paper but how does this entity that proffers itself as a tech solutions company do what they claim to do?
Ultimately, they differ from other financial technology companies like Paystack presently in the Nigerian tech-sphere in the sense that flutterwave offers these other companies their services. Simply put? the company aggregates payment services from numerous gateways and places them under one platform whilst providing seamless and secure payment solutions to banks, businesses and their customers, allowing marketplace merchants accept local and international remittance from card and bank accounts so establishments don’t have to take on the expense and burden. Their technology also powers services like PiggybankNG, Flywire, Uber and a host of other companies.
So what products do they offer?
Rave by Flutterwave is a service that enables merchants accept global payments from card, bank accounts and USSD and is powered by mCASH (a payment option that allows consumers to pay merchants by dialing a USSD short code on their mobile phones). It can be and has been integrated into a number of online websites and platforms such as Megabet and even made its digital point of sale debut in 2017 at the jollof festival in Lagos. Rave opens your business to more opportunities by letting you accept a range of payment methods including card, bank account and mobile wallet payments from customers around the world.
Another product of theirs' is Barter by flutterwave which is an app and web-based system that allows users to create virtual US dollar debit cards within seconds for one-time or regular usage cutting down approval waiting period by only asks for a working email address and phone number as the service relies on customer details already obtained by a user’s bank and with their new near-by feature makes it easier to find and send money to friends near you.
In the 3 full years that Flutterwave has been active they have made their mark on the African technology and business scene earning them accolades along the way. With over $2.5 billion in payments processed, $100 million in processed transactions, 50 bank partners in Africa and over 1200 developers in their employ it’s safe to say Flutterwave was the answer to a problem people didn’t think was worth solving. Flutterwave has raised a total of $20.4 million in funding over 8 rounds successfully completing the Series A extension round of financing in October 2018, with investments from MasterCard as well as welcomed former chairman and CEO of Visa, Joe Saunders, to the Board of Directors.
Cardinal partnerships within the financial industry, enterprise customers like Arik Air, Uber and Flywire including newer customers such as DusuPay (Uganda), BroadPay (Zambia) and PennySmart (Ghana) and the 26,000 businesses on Rave that trust them to help to grow their business are testimony to the stellar achievements’ of Flutterwave. It has $1M in estimated revenue annually competing with the likes of interswitch, gravity payments and CardFlight.
Flutterwave has a post-money valuation in the range of $10M to $50M as of July 31, 2017 according to PrivCo. Flutterwave won the West Africa Mobile Awards in 2017 for best commerce and retail service held in Lagos, Nigeria. Recently, they partnered with Chinese e-commerce Company Alibaba’s Alipay to offer digital payments between Africa and China and follows one between Flutterwave and visa earlier this year to launch a consumer payment product for Africa, called GetBarter which helps users manage funds in home currency,give detailed reports on spending patterns and providing an option for easy repayable short-term loans, right from the app.
Flutter wave is also very visible in the techverse as one of the leaders in producing promising developer talent because the company is very developer oriented, boasting as one of the best places for young tech enthusiasts to strut their stuff, it’s no surprise they are the goal most software engineers want to achieve.
Recently flutterwave organized a successful job fair for the laid off developers from Andela to scoop up talent into their ranks and also expose them to other companies that would need them aboard their workforce.
As with all tech solution companies; no one is safe from difficulties. With different countries having their own kind of digital payment methods it poses a different kind of problem because of the fragmented system. Most African merchants do not accept digital payments today because they don’t have the resources to integrate different payment methods that don’t involve cash. Aggressive push back from the Nigerian government and crippling licensing fees have in no small way made their stand known on what part of the technological divide they wish to further.
Regardless, the future is brighter for Flutterwave because their present is bright. The African commerce ecosystem interacting with the data created by millions of mobile phones, youth population growth and the diversity of the African continent provide a plethora of resources for which Flutterwave will not Falter In making use of to change the way the world does business with Africa.
You can find flutter wave on any of the following social media platforms; Instagram , Twitter , LinkedIn and Facebook.
The Fin-Tech industry will be on the lookout for new projects and how much more and in what areas the company will innovate. In the words of founder Iyin Aboyeji — “It pays to solve a really big problem”.
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