Flutterwave, the Lagos/San Francisco African-focused-tech firm has led a $35 Million series B round of funding led by Greycroft & eVentures with additional participation from CRE Venture Capital, FIS, VISA, and Green Visor, according to Forbes.
Flutterwave, launched in 2016 works as a B2B payments service for companies operating in Africa, helping them make payments to other companies in and outside the continent. The fintech giant has processed 100 million transactions valued at over $5.4 billion for global leaders including Uber, Booking.com, Jumia and did the payment integration for U.S. pop-star Cardi B’s 2019 performances in Nigeria and Ghana.
With the latest round of funding, the fintech platform will spread across Francophone and North Africa, to connect the African market with the world. They also plan on hiring more business development staff and expand its developer team to create more sector expertise, TechCrunch reports.
“We don’t just want to be a payment technology company, we have sector expertise around education, travel, gaming, e-commerce, fintech companies. They all use our expertise. If you are a charity that wants to raise money for cancer research in Ghana, or you want to sell online, or you’re Cardi B…who wants to do concerts in Africa…we want to be able to set up payments, write the code and create the platform for those needs.” said CEO/Founder Olugbenga Agboola.
Additionally, Flutterwave’s has signed commercial agreements with Visa and FIS. The agreement will make Flutterwave a payment provider for Worldplay, a recent acquisition of FIS, in Africa.
“With this partnership, any Worldpay merchant in Europe or the U.S. can accept any African payment. If someone goes to pay Netflix with an African card, it just works,” GB said.
Flutterwave was a 2016 graduate of the FIS FinTech Accelerator program.
Additionally, company said it’s partnership with Visa will help to boost its consumer payments service, Barter by issuing physical and virtual Visa cards, and processing payments using Visa’s networks increasing access to digital commerce for African consumers and connects them to the rest of the world.
Flutterwave’s latest funding brings the company’s total investment to $55 million.
