Flutterwave’s Fintech Journey: From Startup to African Banker Awards Winner
It’s been a big year for Flutterwave, with its recent recognition as Fintech of the Year from the African Banker Awards[2] , the payments service has secured a growing number of accolades for its dynamic and progressive approach to doing business.
The annual African Banker Awards honor companies and individuals for their contributions toward growing Africa’s banking sector in creative ways.
“This recognition is a testament to the hard work, dedication, and creativity of the entire team at Flutterwave,” said company founder and CEO Olugbenga “GB” Agboola. “It also reaffirms our mission to simplify payments for endless possibilities, and we remain committed to building solutions that enable multinationals to expand in and within Africa, and also supporting African companies to compete globally.”
But this award won’t sit alone in Flutterwave’s corporate headquarters.
Prior to its most recent honor, the fintech company had secured similar recognitions for its business practices from outlets like CNBC, which named Flutterwave to its Disruptor 50 list, [3] and Fast Company magazine, which included Flutterwave among its Most Innovative Companies for 2024. [4]
When an 8-year-old company in the fast-growing fintech space continues to garner this kind of attention from outlets across the globe, something deeply innovative must be going on. To understand why so many groups are lining up to celebrate the company’s success, it helps to examine Flutterwave’s business philosophy.
While the company is best known as one of Africa’s first tech unicorns [5] [6] [7] (a privately held startup valued at more than $1 billion), Flutterwave started out, humbly, as the brainchild of an e-payment veteran who wanted to solve a problem his clients kept facing.
The Early Days
Today[8] , Flutterwave’s payments platform accepts more than 150 types of currency, processes over 500,000 payments per day[9] , and handles hundreds of API requests every second. But at the beginning, it was built to solve a standard, everyday problem.
Back in the 2010s, multinationals operating in Africa had difficulty paying staff members and contract employees who were spread out across the continent. The process of sending payments across country lines was complicated, bogged down by a patchwork of regulations and protocols.
At the time, the technology available to African banks was substandard, meaning it could take days for transactions to process cross-border transactions.
Agboola noticed this problem while working at Standard Bank in South Africa, and it lit a fire within him. With his prior experience at Google Wallet and PayPal, he knew financial technology could solve the problem.
All he needed was a platform that could glide across Africa’s regulations at modern speed.
And, just like that, in 2016, Flutterwave was born.
A Drive To Thrive
Originally, the company catered its platform toward enterprise businesses. It made sense. Early in the company’s life, Flutterwave landed Uber as a client. [10] To keep the global juggernaut happy, the African fintech company pushed most of its resources toward helping multinationals do business across Africa.
But as time wore on, different problems bubbled to the surface. African artists had no easy way to sell their wares overseas. Expatriates couldn’t wire money back to their families in a timely manner. Students attending universities overseas had to endure long processing times to pay their tuition because so few educational institutions accepted African currencies.
As each new issue came to light, Flutterwave set out to solve it, the same way it attacked the initial problem that led to its creation.
And, in every case, the company drew upon its understanding of modern technology to make the financial lives of African people and businesses smoother and simpler.
The African Banker Awards
For all these solutions, Flutterwave has been honored. It has received recognition from the industry, from the press, and from investors.
Its latest recognition, however, stands apart. Started by African Banker magazine in 2007, the annual African Banker Awards are part of the African Development Bank’s annual meetings, which this year had the theme “Africa’s Transformation: The African Development Bank Group and the Reform of the Global Financial Architecture.”
Flutterwave bested fierce competition, outshining companies like Jumo and Yabx Technologies to capture top honors at the event, which was held in Nairobi, Kenya.
The Fintech of the Year Award honors the financial technology company that brings the “most innovative practices to the financial services industry.” Judges base their decision on a set of criteria that includes how each company uses innovative technology, new business practices, delivers high-quality products and services, and/or improves the security or reliability of transactions.
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