Flutterwave Closes USD $170m Funding, Achieving Unicorn Status

Wednesday, 10th March 2021: Flutterwave, Africa’s leading payments technology company, today announces it has secured USD $170 million from a leading group of international investors as part of a successful Series C round. The round was led by growth-equity firms Avenir Growth Capital (“Avenir”) and Tiger Global Management LLC (“Tiger Global”) with participation from new and existing investors.

Founded by entrepreneur Olugbenga Agboola in 2016, the company’s valuation is now in
excess of USD $1 billion. The fundraise brings the total investment in Flutterwave to USD
$225 million and is one of only a very small number of African fintech companies to have
raised significant funds in a period of widespread disruption and economic uncertainty.

The new funds will allow Flutterwave to execute an ambitious growth strategy to become a leading global payments company, empowering SMEs and multinational brands by connecting the highly fragmented African digital payments landscape. Flutterwave will invest the new capital to accelerate customer acquisition in existing and international markets, as well as develop complementary and innovative products such as the newly launched Flutterwave Mobile, an app to help accelerate ecommerce growth as a result of the success of the Flutterwave Stores.

This fundraise comes at a time when Covid-19 has accelerated the shift to digital payments in Africa, which has contributed to Flutterwave’s exceptional revenue growth of 226% CAGR from 2018-2020.

Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola, Founder and CEO of Flutterwave, said: “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. 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.”

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.”

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.”

Scott Shleifer, Partner at Tiger Global Management LLC, added: “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.”

This latest funding round was led by Avenir and Tiger Global with participation from DST Global, Early Capital Berrywood, Green Visor Capital, Greycroft Capital, Insight Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Tiger Management, WorldpayFIS, and 9yards Capital. Avenir and Tiger Global have funded some of the brightest tech start-ups in the world including Current, Latch, Savage x Fenty, JD.com and Facebook.

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.

– END –

About Flutterwave
Flutterwave is a Payments Technology Company that helps businesses all over the world expand their operations in Africa and other emerging markets, through a platform that enables cross-border transactions via one API. Flutterwave has processed over 140M transactions worth over USD $9B to date and serves more than 290,000 businesses including customers like Uber, Flywire, Booking.com, Facebook, etc. The Company’s key advantage is international payment processing in 150 currencies and multiple payment modes including local and international cards, mobile wallets, bank transfers, Barter by Flutterwave etc. Flutterwave has an infrastructure reach in over 33 African countries, including Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa. For more information on Flutterwave’s journey, please visit: www.flutterwave.com

About Avenir
Avenir is a growth stage investment firm. The firm takes a research-driven, first principles-based approach to identify how new technologies, changing consumer preferences or evolving regulatory environments will reshape large end markets. Avenir invests in high-growth, category-defining companies capitalizing on these paradigm shifts. Such investments have included Savage x Fenty, Latch, Drizly, Current, Bevi, and Mark43, among others. Avenir was founded in 2017 and is based in New York.

About Tiger Global Management, LLC.
Tiger Global Management, LLC is an investment firm that deploys capital globally. The firm’s fundamentally oriented investments focus primarily on the global internet, software, financial technology, consumer and industrial sectors. The private equity strategy has a ten-year investment horizon and targets growth-oriented private companies. Such investments have included Spotify, Harry’s, Warby Parker, Peloton, JD.com, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yandex, Mail.ru Group, Despegar, Ola and Flipkart. The public equity efforts emphasize deep due diligence on individual companies and long-term secular themes. Tiger Global Management, LLC, was founded in 2001 and is based in New York with affiliate offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangalore and Melbourne.

Press contacts:
Hudson Sandler LLP
Flutterwave@hudsonsandler.com