Read more about Tech
The biggest success stories are in tech and the biggest success stories in tech are in fintech. In the same vein as Paystack and Interswitch before it, Flutterwave has now broken a hallowed barrier in technology in Africa and anywhere in the world really-the one billion dollar valuation mark. Flutterwave announced hours ago that it had closed its latest funding round-a Series C- having secured $170 million. This is coming exactly a year on from the $35 million Series B raise in 2020. The latest round was led by New York-based private equity outfit, Avenir Growth Capital and hedge fund giant and private equity firm, Tiger Global. Other participators include Greysoft Capital, DST Global, Tiger Management, WorldPay and Salesforce Venture. The latest funding round has seen the African payment provider’s valuation top $1 billion.
Sign up to the Connect Nigeria daily newsletter
The Lagos and San-Francisco based outfit has enjoyed a first-moving advantage in its not so small corner of the fintech space. Alongside Paystack, it has blazed the trail and continues to lead in that field. Flutterwave was founded in late 2016 by Iyin Aboyeji and Gbenga Agboola to ease online payments through its API. In the four and a half years since Flutterwave has now completed 140 million unique transactions worth at least $9 billion and has raised $225 million in seed funding. It is in a unique company in the light of those numbers as only Interswitch and Jumia (disputedly so) have been quoted in that light in the past few years. Nigeria’s tech ecosystem is increasingly growing in status and reputation. The past year of wins in the tech ecosystem has seen to that. Only a few weeks back, Mono was admitted into the Y-Combinator incubator program for the first quarter of the year 2021. Flutterwave is the latest upgrade in the fortunes of the tech industry as a whole and it can only get better from here. Featured Image Source: Disrupt Africa
Got a suggestion? Contact us: editor@connectnigeria.com
You might also like:
- Consumer Technology: Smartphone Penetration in Nigeria
- Consumer Technology: E-commerce and Digital Payments
- 7 Things to Consider Before Choosing a Fibre to the Home Provider in Nigeria
- 8 Productivity Hacks for Tech Professionals
Thanks David for your article on Fkutterwave. Unfortunately, Nigerians including myself have not been able to use PayStack platform for any form of payment since the begining of this year. My bank GTBank informed me that PayStack has refused to accept payments using our Naira MasterCard , something that was possible last year during the lockdown and so.
Do you have a solution to this problem apart from asking someone to get a dollar master card? I am sure alotnof your readers will appreciate your solution.