Nigerian fintech - Afrikan Heroes

Leading Fintech, Flutterwave Valued at Over $1B After Successful FundRaising

March 10, 2021

One of Africa’s most successful Fintech firms Flutterwave has joined the rank of unicorn with valuation of over $1 billion after joining two other Nigerian firms, Jumia and Interswitch after raising $170 million in Series C funding. The new round was led by growth-equity firms Avenir Growth Capital and Tiger Global. New and existing investors who participated include DST Global, Early Capital Berrywood, Green Visor Capital, Greycroft Capital, Insight Ventures, PayPal, Salesforce Ventures, Tiger Management, Worldpay FIS 9yards Capital.

This funding round comes a year after Flutterwave raised $35 million Series B and $20 million Series A in 2018. In total, Flutterwave has raised $225 million and is one of the few African startups to have secured more than $200 million in funding.

Flutterwave was founded by entrepreneur Iyinoluwa Aboyeji and Olugbenga Agboola in 2016, the company is present in 20 African countries, with a reach of over 33 countries on the continent. According to CEO Olugbenga Agboola, the company grew more than 100% in revenue within the past year due to the pandemic without giving specifics on numbers. This contributed to its compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 226% from 2018.

With this new capital, Flutterwave says it will invest to 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 to help to accelerate eCommerce growth as a result of the success of the Flutterwave Stores.

This announcement comes a few months after Paystack’s acquisition by stripe for more than $200 million last year. While there were rumours of Flutterwave taking the same route, this Series C round suggests otherwise.

Flutterwave is the third unicorn coming out of Nigeria after Interswitch and the e-commerce company, Jumia. But what’s really impressive about this is how quickly Flutterwave joined the small club of unicorns – under 10 years.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

How TeamApt Became Nigeria’s largest non-bank mobile money

October 25, 2020

Fintech startup TeamApt which launched its mobile money platform Moniepoint in 2019, has become the largest non-bank mobile money service in the country, processing 13 million transactions monthly. Launched in 2015, the Lagos-based TeamApt was formed to solve inefficiencies in Nigeria’s growing digital financial services market, and has a variety of products, including payments service AptPay, digital banking solution Moneytor, and Profectus Robotics, a back-office automation solution.

TeamApt Founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Tosin Eniolorunda

TeamApt which counts 100 per cent of the country’s commercial banks amongst its customers and last year secured a switching licence from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) as well as a US$5.5 million funding round, now has more than three million customers and 100,000 businesses depending on its solutions and infrastructure.

Moniepoint, TeamApt’s mobile money platform, has been a particular success, and has become the largest non-bank mobile money operator in Nigeria by value processed, despite being the latest entrant. Moniepoint processes 13 million transactions monthly with a value of NGN197 billion (US$516 million), while averaging 23 per cent month-on-month user growth.Meanwhile, Monnify, its payment gateway also launched in 2019, is the first and largest account transfers payment gateway in Nigeria.

Founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Tosin Eniolorunda told Disrupt Africa he was pleased with the consistency of the progress TeamApt had made since launch.

“Starting and running a business can be a very arduous and time-consuming task but seeing results and enabling business growth can be very rewarding,” he said. Such success has encouraged the team to push on with expansion plans. “Our plan has always been to expand beyond Nigeria and take the solutions that have worked so well in Nigeria to other developing and emerging markets. We’ve pinpointed some markets,” Eniolorunda said.

With this in mind, further funding is also on the horizon. “We are speaking to various people and exploring a few opportunities,” said Eniolorunda.