It’s been just an year since we shared about Series B of Flutterwave, our portfolio startup and one of the few African fintech companies reaching the $1B valuation and now Flutterwave has raised another $170M in Series C.
The funding round was led by Tiger Global Management and Avenir Growth Capital in participation with Insight Partners, Tiger Management Corporation, Worldpay, Salesforce Ventures, Greycroft, Early Capital, 9Yards Capital and Green Visor Capital.
Let’s have a quick recap of Flutterwave financials:
- 2016 – Seed round
- 2017 – Series A
- 2018 – Series A Extension
- 2020 – Series B
- Now – Series C
According to Crunchbase, Flutterwave’s total funding amount now stands at $234.7M from 40 investors after current Series C funding.
Flutterwave says more than 290,000 businesses use its platform to carry out payments. And according to the company’s statement, they can do so “in 150 currencies and multiple payment modes including local and international cards, mobile wallets, bank transfers, Barter by Flutterwave.”
While its website shows an active presence in 11 African countries, Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga Agboola, also known as GB, told TechCrunch the company is live in 20 African countries with an infrastructure reach in over 33 countries on the continent.
Agboola says his company grew more than 100% in revenue within the past year due to the pandemic without giving specifics on numbers. It also contributed to its compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 226% from 2018.
According to the CEO, this growth resulted from an increase in activities in “COVID beneficiary sectors” — a term used by Flutterwave to describe sectors positively impacted by the pandemic. They include streaming, gaming, remittance and e-commerce, among others. Agboola adds that the company plans to ride on these sectors’ growth and continue in that trajectory.
Flutterwave wants to become a global payments company, and the Series C investment helps to reach that goal. The company says it plans to use the funds to speed up customer acquisition in its present markets. It will also improve existing product offerings like Barter, where it has over 500,000 users, and introduce new offerings. One such is Flutterwave Mobile, which in the founder’s words “will turn merchants’ mobile devices into a point of sale, allowing them to accept payments and make sales.”
Please read full story at Techcrunch.