Every company claims to be innovative, but few actually make good on the promise. That’s what makes Flutterwave, the African e-payments platform, an exceptional case. Not only has the company done the impossible by transforming the financial landscape of its home continent, it has contributed to a revolution of ideas that promises to reshape Africa into a key player in the modern economy.
Through creative engineering and an overarching mission to empower Africans through technology, Flutterwave has brought new opportunities to an entire generation. And, if it keeps up, it might just fundamentally transform the prospects of future generations across the continent.
And it all started by solving a simple problem.
The Birth of a Revolution
Flutterwave was founded by Olugbenga “GB” Agboola in 2016 after he noticed that many of his multinational clients struggled to conduct business in Africa.
While working at a bank, Agboola frequently encountered frustration when large companies tried to transfer money from one African country to another. Africa’s patchwork payment landscape made simple transactions, such as buying building supplies or paying workers, much more difficult than it would be in other places.
“This typically meant that business and personal transactions sent to Accra from Lagos, or from Nairobi to Johannesburg, had to be sent to Europe or North America, then rerouted back to the continent,” Agboola said. “It was a costly and time-consuming process that we believed we could fix.”
Having worked at PayPal and Google Wallet, Agboola knew that modern payments technology could fix the problem. Building a platform capable of handling Africa’s multiple currencies and fragmented payment laws was no easy task. Yet Agboola believed the result would create countless opportunities for Africans. He had to try.
“Those were the driving forces behind Flutterwave: How do we become like a butterfly that can create a ripple effect in the ecosystem and still be tiny, yet we can make waves?” he said. “Hence the name Flutterwave, by the way.”
Leading by Embracing the Leap
Flutterwave has been able to steer the continent toward a greater acceptance of technology by meeting Africans where they are. Instead of following the same path that countries in Europe, Asia, or North America have used, Africa can chart its own course by passing over steps of the digital revolution that aren’t necessary to a modern economy.
“Africa has always been known to leapfrog. We go from nothing to something, consistently — no phones, to mobiles, to internet. People skipped browsers; they search for what they want to buy on Instagram,” Agboola said. “We’ve always been that way when it comes to [technology] leapfrogging a generation.
“That’s already happening here [with payments] as well. A lot of the unicorns you see in Africa are solving real problems. From OPay to Chipper Cash to Interswitch, if you live in Africa, you will see firsthand how these guys are relevant and are actually solving problems. And they hope to do so at a huge scale, which is amazing.”
By embracing the reality that Africans can leap into the decentralized world of Web 2.0 without the need for earlier internet iterations, Flutterwave has cultivated a strong audience for its advanced financial products. In fact, some of its services that began in Africa have since been exported to other continents, showing that African technology can not just compete with global apps — it can lead the way.
“There are so many problems to solve on the continent. There are so many things to build. I’m excited by entrepreneurs who are willing to take on these crazy problems and try to solve them across the board,” Agboola said.
“I think it’s a great time to be here. The market is still huge and still largely untapped. There is still a huge population that are not even banked at all on the continent. It’s just the place to be in the next 10 to 20 years. It’s going to be explosive. Our goal is to be here and stay alive to be able to harness the opportunity.”
Finding Recognition
Agboola likes to say that innovation is “part of the core values” of Flutterwave. And if the media coverage is any indication, a lot of industry insiders agree with him.
The company was ranked as the No. 1 Most Innovative Company in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa by none other than Fast Company magazine. The award recognized the contributions Flutterwave makes to the field of fintech, including its state-of-the-art platform, user-friendly apps, and creative services that solve real problems that had been ignored for far too long.
The firm started with the simple aim of making cross-national payments in Africa fast and easy. Its platform proved revolutionary, allowing multinational corporations like Microsoft and Uber to more easily operate in Africa.
But Agboola wasn’t content to stop there. Since Flutterwave launched in 2016, it has steadily expanded its services. It continuously finds new ways for Africans to use e-payments in life-changing ways.
Flutterwave services like Tuition, an app that allows Africans studying abroad to pay school fees in their local currency, are seemingly simple products that can lead to seismic changes in the lives of families and students across Africa.
“Every day, we come to work, and we live and breathe innovation,” Agboola said.
“We’ve since built out Africa’s biggest payment network by reach, created solutions that make payments solutions, currency exchanges, e-commerce, and remittances easier for global companies selling in Africa — local businesses and Africans alike.”
