Nigeria’s financial technology, Flutterwave says it has raised another $250 million in Series D funding, valuing the company at over $3 billion.
The latest investors 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.
We’re starting off 2022 with some audacious goals and we’re doing everything we can to bring them to life.
We’re glad to let you know that we just completed our Series D fundraise.
The details:
💰: $250m
📈: Over $3bn in valuation📖: https://t.co/TUJBtgUITl pic.twitter.com/us2dMvP9HX
— Flutterwave (@theflutterwave) February 16, 2022
Read Also: Flutterwave And PayPal Partner To Allow African Merchants Accept, Make Payments
Several existing investors who also participated in previous rounds also followed this round, including, Glynn Capital, Avenir Growth, Tiger Global, Green Visor Capital and Salesforce Ventures.
According to the company, the new funds will drive Flutterwave’s ambitious expansion plan to accelerate customer acquisition in existing markets and growth through Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) and develop complementary products while encouraging innovations in its products and services development.
In March 2021, the San Francisco-headquartered and Lagos-based startup raised $170 million in a Series C round from Tiger Global and Avenir at a valuation of $1 billion.
The latest financing brings Flutterwave’s total raise since its inception six years ago to $475 million (it raised a $35 million Series B in 2020 and a $20 million Series A in 2018).
Read Also: Nigerian Payments Startup, Flutterwave Raises $170 Million, Now Valued At Over $1 Billion
At $3 billion, Flutterwave is currently the highest valued African startup, surpassing the $2 billion valuation set by SoftBank-backed fintech, OPay and FTX-backed cross-border payments platform, Chipper Cash last year.
Led by founder and CEO, Olugbenga “GB” Agboola, Flutterwave facilitates cross-border payments transactions of small to large businesses in Africa via one Application Programming Interface (API).
The company also helps businesses outside Africa expand their operations on the continent. Some of its international clients include Booking.com, Flywire and Uber.
Flutterwave has seen astronomical growth in the last 6 years. The number of businesses using its platform has also increased. In March 2021, it was 290,000; now, 900,000 businesses globally use Flutterwave to process payments in 150 currencies and across different payment modes: local and international cards, mobile wallets, bank transfers and its consumer product, Barter.
While Flutterwave’s market share in enterprise payments has primarily been responsible for this growth, diversifying into fintech products for small and medium businesses, retail and consumers also played a part.
Flutterwave Store, launched in April 2020, was revamped last November to Flutterwave Market. The e-commerce solution has grown to over 30,000 merchants that consumers can shop from various products.
In December, Flutterwave launched Send, a remittance service that allows users to send money to recipients to and from Africa.
Customers use Send — which Agboola called “Flutterwave’s fastest-growing product” — mainly to pay for family support, gifts and tuition, the company told TechCrunch.
After scaling its payments product across sub-Saharan Africa, Flutterwave has expanded its services up north to Egypt and Morocco.
Agboola told TechCrunch asserted that expanding into these countries is the first step of Flutterwave’s move into emerging markets such as the Middle East and Latin America.
Although Flutterwave has its headquarters in the U.S., it didn’t run any operations there. Most of its U.S.-affiliated business involved striking partnerships with fintech giants such as PayPal, Visa, Discover and Worldpay FIS to facilitate global payments with Africa.
