Flutterwave has become the highest valued African start-up with this investment. It is a validation of African talent, innovation and its young inspiring people. It is also a huge endorsement in the growth of the business, innovation and technology landscape in Africa.

Flutterwave’s latest backers include some of the world’s most respected investors led by B Capital Group, and with participation from Alta Park Capital, Whale Rock Capital, Lux Capital, among others. Several existing investors who also participated in previous rounds also followed this round, including, Glynn Capital, Avenir Growth, Tiger Global, Green Visor Capital, Salesforce Ventures.

The new funds will drive Flutterwave’s ambitious expansion plan to accelerate customer acquisition in existing markets and growth through M&A; and develop complementary products while encouraging new innovations in its products and services development. The Company will share more details during the Flutterwave 3.0 event. The virtual event is billed for 18th February 2022 and members of the public can RSVP here.

Since inception in 2016, the Flutterwave team has been on a mission to create endless possibilities for customers and businesses in Africa and the emerging markets. The Series D fundraise comes on the back of an impressive run of five years in which Flutterwave has processed over 200M transactions worth over USD $16B to date across 34 countries in Africa.

It also follows a year of rapid growth for the brand which now serves over 900,000 businesses across the globe.

In 2021, Flutterwave launched a range of new products including Flutterwave Market for merchants to sell their goods via an online marketplace and, most recently, Send, a remittance service that empowers customers to seamlessly send money to recipients to and from Africa.

Flutterwave has also partnered with leading global and pan-African technology and telecommunication companies such as PayPal, MTN, Airtel Africa to drive financial inclusion on the continent and create endless possibilities for customers who can build customisable payment applications through its APIs.

Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola, founder and CEO of Flutterwave, said: “Our story is that of resilience and hard work. Our growth so far is due to the support of our customers, our partners, the banks, the public, the regulators, and importantly our people. The Central Bank of Nigeria, under the leadership of Dr. Godwin Emefiele, laid the vision of a transformational Payment System in Nigeria, provided the framework for innovation in this space, and has continued to create regulations that have enabled us to grow and thrive. We are grateful to them and to all the other Central Banks in all the countries where we operate.” 

“We set out to build a platform that simplifies payments for everyone and today, our solutions are used across the globe to connect Africans to the world and the world to Africans. We are delighted that investors believe in us and our story and are committing their resources to this belief. This latest funding demonstrates the conviction of some of the world’s leading investors in both our business model, team and the Africa technology market. It gives Flutterwave the much-needed support to deliver on our plans to provide the best experience for our merchants and customers around the world.”

Matt Levinson, partner at B Capital said, “At B Capital, we seek to back generational companies with broad platform potential. Flutterwave has a unique opportunity to accomplish this as the dominant payments’ infrastructure provider across Africa. In addition to their emergence as the leading enterprise payments processor for the continent, Flutterwave is innovating at breakneck speed with novel fintech solutions for large corporates, SMEs and consumers. I’ve had the pleasure of backing this world-class team since 2017 and couldn’t be more thrilled that B Capital is leading their Series D.

“Flutterwave may ultimately build one of the most consequential fintech business in the world, enabling hundreds of thousands of merchants to transact online and connect Africa to the global economy,” Levinson added.

David Glynn, managing partner of Glynn Capital, said: “We believe the digitisation of payments globally is one of the largest and most important trends in technology.

Having been investors in Flutterwave since 2017, we have had a front row seat in seeing Flutterwave establish itself as a leading payments company in Africa as it drives adoption of seamless digital payments experiences for merchants and consumers alike. We look forward to supporting the company as it addresses its significant growth opportunity in the years ahead, Glynn said.” 

This latest fundraising has seen Flutterwave’s valuation more than triple since its last funding round in March last year when it became one of Africa’s fastest growing Unicorn.

With participation from Motley Fool Ventures, Saison Capital, Chrysalis Capital and Y-Combinator’s Michael Seibel, amongst others, Greycroft and Tiger Global led the series A round for Bamboo.

Bamboo plans to further accelerate its growth, doubling down on unlocking new markets and launching more products with the funds.

Richmond Bassey, Bamboo’s CEO and co-founder said the company’s goal is to give Africans and their asset managers easy, fast and secure access to global investment options that will allow them learn real returns.

“We’re building the technology infrastructure powering financial services in Africa such that if you’re investing in the global capital markets from Africa, you’ll be doing so using Bamboo, directly or indirectly.”

“We also want to make it seamless for African investors in the diaspora to discover the best investment opportunities on the continent. We’re excited about our work with local regulators so far to make this a reality.”

Greycroft partner, Alison Lange Engel noted her delight to support the innovative, user-first approach the Bamboo team is bringing to market.

“Bamboo is enabling Africans to build wealth by creating an investing platform that is helpful to both experienced investors and to those new to the stock market,” she said.

Bamboo was launched as an investment platform in 2020. The company was built on a goal to unlock global markets for Africans by providing real-time access to dollar-denominated assets via its platform. Users can fund with their dollar or local currency balance almost instantly and start investing in stocks.

Having gained over 300,000 accounts in Nigeria, Bamboo affirms that about 20 percent are active daily traders, while 75 percent never traded stocks before using the platform. In 2021, repeat depositors made up 85 per cent of deposits on the Bamboo platform.