A flutterwave, one of the unicorn startups in Africa, achieved a new high-profile feat. Due to an investment round of 250 million dollars, the startup was thus valued at 3 billion dollars, in the last week, reveals the Tech Crunch.
Flutterwave is a Nigerian fintech created in 2017, which started by creating a kind of API for implementing payments in companies operating on the African continent — a bit like what Stripe does, which today is the most valuable startup in the world .
According to the founders of the platform, who have a past linked to Google and Paypal, the original idea was to take advantage of the fact that the region has increasingly faster internet (despite the fact that less than 30% of the continent has coverage ) and more and more people with a mobile phone (80% according to UN data). The founders' idea is for the company to become the reference payment platform for all companies that want to take advantage of the digitization of the region, thus creating a giant business opportunity.
To report that Flutterwave started out as part of the popular American accelerator And Combinator, where he had the opportunity to develop his product and start closing his first network of customers. Initially, the focus was very much on the side of established institutions, which needed a complement that would allow them to have a stronger online presence and handle a greater volume of payments and transactions. That's why the startup started working with the main African banks and large established companies, which allowed the platform to gain market validation.
BUT: Africa's Leading Payments Startup Takes Its Services to Kenya
After building a reputation and raising the first rounds of investment, fintech started looking at the growing number of African SMEs setting up online businesses in a market where they didn't have many tools at their disposal. The pandemic, which posed many challenges to these and other companies, made this need even more urgent and gave Flutterwave another opportunity. First, the startup adapted its initial solution to make it easier to integrate into these companies' platforms. It then decided to develop Flutterwave Market, a solution that allows SMEs to directly create their online stores with the Flutterwave solution already integrated and reach thousands of consumers. In this way, the startup could work simultaneously with Shopify, Amazon and Stripe, which was ideal for an embryonic market looking for simple options in the midst of rapid changes.
Here are some current startup numbers:
- It is used by 900 businesses worldwide (it was 300 thousand a year ago)
- Has processed 200 million transactions valued at $ 16 billion
- is present in 34 countries and allows transactions in about 150 currencies
