Flutterwave raises $10M+ Series A to scale Pan-African payments infrastructure

Flutterwave has raised over $10 million in a Series A round to expand its modern payments infrastructure for banks and businesses across Africa. The round was led by Greycroft Partners and Green Visor Capital, with participation from Y Combinator and Glynn Capital, alongside existing investors including Omidyar Network, Social Capital, CRE Venture Capital and HOF Capital. The company plans to use the capital to hire more talent, scale global operations and accelerate its expansion across African markets.

Flutterwave addresses the gap between Africa’s fast-growing consumer and business spend and the continent’s limited access to the digital economy. While consumer and business spending in Africa exceeds $4 trillion annually and is projected to reach $3.5 trillion for businesses alone by 2025, credit card penetration from global brands such as Mastercard and Visa remains below 3%. Flutterwave works with Pan-African banks to give global companies like Facebook, Uber, Google, Netflix and Amazon a single integration to accept local payment methods including local debit cards, bank accounts and mobile wallets across 30 African countries.

“The digital economy is the new global economy. Yet despite its incredible promise, Africa is excluded from it because of several challenges with its outdated and fragmented payment systems. Flutterwave is building modern payments infrastructure to power growth for the digital economy of one of the fastest-growing regions in the world,” said Iyin Aboyeji, CEO and Co-founder of Flutterwave. The company’s platform has already processed over $1.2 billion in payments across more than 10 million transactions since its launch in May 2016.

Investors say the company is moving quickly to displace legacy solutions across the region. “Greycroft is scouring the world for exciting SAAS companies, and FlutterWave is one of the fastest growing software companies we have seen,” said Ian Sigalow at Greycroft Partners. “Flutterwave built a lightweight, developer-friendly tool that provides key elements of a modern banking core, and they have quickly displaced legacy solutions across Africa. In Nigeria alone they are already processing a few percent of GDP from a cold start at the beginning of last year.” Joe Saunders, Chairman and General Partner at Green Visor Capital, who joins Flutterwave’s board of directors, added, “Flutterwave is building infrastructure and technology solutions that will help modernize African payments. We are excited to be working with this extraordinary team.”

Headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Lagos, Nairobi, Accra and Johannesburg, Flutterwave was founded by a team of African ex-bankers, engineers and entrepreneurs. The company positions its infrastructure as a way to eliminate barriers to the digital economy for African consumers and businesses and to connect African markets to global commerce. “We are excited to work with world-class investors who have helped build global payments giants like Visa and Braintree to achieve our mission of building modern payments infrastructure to connect Africa to the global economy,” Aboyeji said.