Holding hands with big guy.
According to foreign media reports, on Tuesday, African fintech company Flutterwave completed US $ 35 million in Series B financing and announced that it will cooperate with European payment giant Worldpay, which was acquired by US financial services provider FIS for US $ 350 billion last March, for Africa Provide payment services.
This round of funding was funded by Greycroft and eVentures, with VISA, FIS, CRE Venture Capital and Green Visor also participating.
Flutterwave previously completed a $ 20 million Series A round of financing in October 2018. This round of financing was led by Green Visor and Greycroft. MasterCard and others also participated in the investment.
After the latest funding round, Flutterwave has raised more than $ 55 million.
Flutterwave went live in 2016, was founded in Nigeria and is headquartered in San Francisco. It mainly serves B-side customers, and merchants can provide their application programming interfaces (APIs) and cooperate with Flutterwave developers to customize payment applications. Its early customers were mainly multinational companies, and then it began to expand to smaller African companies and even startups. Its cooperating customers include Uber and Booking, as well as Jumia, Africa’s largest e-commerce platform, and MAX, Africa’s last mile distribution platform.
Partners are a highlight of Flutterwave. In addition to Worldpay, in 2019, Flutterwave also entered into cooperation with Alipay and VISA, and launched a payment product GetBarter with VISA.
Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga Agboola (aka aka GB) told TechCrunch that Flutterwave will use the funds raised this time for technology and business development to increase its market share in existing countries and regions.
He also said that Flutterwave not only wants to be a payment technology company, but also uses its expertise to serve companies in the education, travel, gaming, e-commerce, fintech and other sectors.
Flutterwave provided payment integration services for American pop singer Cardi B in Nigeria and Ghana last year.
Apart from Nigeria and Ghana, Flutterwave covers South Africa, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Rwanda and the United Kingdom. GB says they want to be the first in these marketsThe selected payment processor. And whether it is a charity fundraising for cancer, a merchant who wants to receive goods online, or a singer like Cardi B who wants to perform in Africa, all can be Flutterwave’s clients.
In 2019, company data shows that Flutterwave processed a total of 107 million transactions with a total transaction volume of $ 5.4 billion.
Fintech is one of the most popular tracks in Africa. According to WeeTracker data, in 2019, a total of 1.35 billion US dollars will flood the African fintech track. Among them, most fintech companies are focusing on P2P business and only focus on 1-2 markets.
Nevertheless, Africa’s fintech track is already showing heads. These include Paga, a 2C mobile payment provider based in Nigeria, and M-Pesa, which provides mobile money transfer services to users in Kenya.
Flutterwave’s biggest competitor was founded in 2002 and was also born at Interswitch in Lagos, Nigeria. Interswitch has a large number of financial products that serve individuals and merchants, including its payment card Verve and payment app Quickteller.
VISA is also behind Interswitch. In November last year, VISA injected a sum of money into Interswitch, and then Interswitch announced a valuation of over 1 billion US dollars, becoming another African unicorn after Jumia. Interswitch and VISA did not disclose more details, but at the time, media broke the news that VISA bought 20% of Interswitch for $ 200 million. There have been many previous reports that Interswitch has plans for an IPO in London.
文 | 雅琪 @ 出海
Edit | 小 纯 @ 出海
Picture | Pixabay
