Flutterwave announces Series C funding of $170 million, attains Unicorn status

Flutterwave's Series C funding of $170 million shoots its valuation to over $1 billion.

Today, Africa’s leading payments startup, Flutterwave announced the close of its Series C funding round of $170 million.

The new round was led by growth-equity firms, Avenir Growth Capital ("Avenir") and Tiger Global Management LLC (“Tiger Global”), who have funded some of the brightest tech start-ups in the world including Current, Latch, Savage x Fenty, and JD.com. Other investors that participated in this round include: DST Global, Early Capital Berrywood, Green Visor Capital, Greycroft Capital, Insight Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Tiger Management, Worldpay FIS, and 9yards Capital.

In less than five years since founding, the company's valuation has gone past $1 billion. This fundraise brings the total investment in Flutterwave to $225 million, making it one of the very few African fintech companies to have raised such significant funds.

"When Flutterwave was founded in 2016, the payments landscape in Africa was highly fragmented, so, the goal was to build a pan-African platform that simplified payments for everyone", says Olugbenga 'GB' Agboola, Founder & CEO, Flutterwave.

With this new capital injection, Flutterwave will execute an ambitious growth strategy to become a global payments company that empowers SMEs and multinational brands by connecting the highly-fragmented African digital payments landscape. Also, Flutterwave will accelerate customer acquisition in existing and international markets, as well as develop complementary and innovative products. One of such products is the newly launched Flutterwave Mobile, an app that enables businesses sell on-the-go. It comes off the back of the success of Flutterwave Stores.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Flutterwave's revenue grew by 226% CAGR from 2018 to 2020. And this fundraise has come to accelerate that shift to digital payments in Africa.

Agboola adds that: "However, our successes would not be possible without (1) Our amazing team of 300+ employees that work tirelessly to achieve our goals (2) The trust and support we have received from our investors and customers and (3) Regulatory bodies like the Central Bank of Nigeria which—under the leadership of the current Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele—has remained at the forefront of the significant efforts that are currently being made by African governments to create the enabling environment for technology, innovation and financial inclusion. This humbling support has created the backbone upon which companies like Flutterwave have been able to thrive."

Jamie Reynolds, Partner at Avenir Growth Capital, commented: "Flutterwave is at the forefront of innovation in payments technology, and we are excited to support the team as they build the last available payments infrastructure frontier in the world—connecting merchants and consumers intra-Africa and globally."

Also, Scott Shleifer, Partner at Tiger Global Management LLC, said: “We are excited to partner with Flutterwave as they continue building a world-class payments platform. We were impressed by Flutterwave’s focus on customer success and believe the company is well-positioned for sustainable long-term growth.”

Flutterwave was founded with the mission to create endless possibilities for customers and businesses in Africa and the emerging markets. It enables its customers to build customisable payment applications through its APIs.

Flutterwave’s Series C fundraise comes on the back of an impressive run of 4 years in which Flutterwave reached over 290,000 merchants and over 500,000 registered Barter users, launched a range of new products and partnerships and expanded its infrastructure into over 33 countries.

"As we look to the future, our focus remains the same which is to stand by our 290,000 merchants across Africa every day as they strive to build their mom-and-pop stores into global businesses. We look forward to increasing our investments across the continent and deepening the impact our platform has on lives and livelihoods as we take more businesses in Africa to the World, and at the same time continue to bring more of the World to Africa", concludes GB Agboola.