Flutterwave-A Potential Unicorn Payment Company in Africa
Published: 2019-09-25 23:44:48

Flutterwave was co-founded in year 2016 by Iyinoluwa Aboyeji and Olugbenga Agboola to solve the financial frictions of online payment process systems in Africa by making payment easy, fast, inclusive and secure with technology. They seem to be the 21st- century middle man type of the old trade by barter era where merchants trade what they have with something they need. Flutterwave serves as an online catalyst and gateway for users to achieve boundless payment needs either to make successful payments or cashouts, anywhere even in preferred local currency, creating a win-win butterfly moments for businesses and individuals in Africa.    


 Flutterwave have its headquarter in San Francisco Bay Area, West Coast Western US. They have raised over $20.4m in 8 funding rounds funded by a total of 25 investors, currently have a staff strength of over 50 direct employees, and recently attracted investment from Raba Capital and Mastercard as an early-stage venture. In the course of running their business, according to a report by Crunchbase, "Flutterwave actively use about 22 technology products and services such as Wordpress and google analytics. The company's website actively uses over 82 technologies which include SSL by default, Android and iPhone mobile-enabled, they are ranked globally as 110,233 among active websites in the world with a traffic of over 447,023 monthly website visitors". The fintech company has processed over $1.3 billion in over 10 million transactions helping big brands such as uber, facebook, booking.com and hotels.ng with payments to generate an estimated revenue of over $1 million annually. They compete with other companies in the fintech space such as PayPal, Interswitch, and VoguePay with presence in about 40 African countries. 

Developer communities of young talents in Africa is growing as the internet and mobile penetration increases in a continent with the youngest workforce population in the world. Flutterwave is a big believer of African talents in the tech industry as they provide a global pedestal for local developers to put their skills to use to better their own lives and millions of other individuals in the global community through leading payment solutions.

They have 3 major categories of service which include developer APIs, Payment, and Software and also have 2 major products already in the market this includes Rave and Barter.

Rave is an easy way to make or receive payments from customers and merchants anywhere in the world through a simple payment link or integrated payout system to hundreds of individuals using mobile money, credit and debit cards, cash tokens. Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) and Automated Clearing House (ACH). 


Barter helps individuals, businesses to manage finances with total control from peer to peer payment, data subscriptions, to send money, borrow money and other spending on bills and utilities to enable customers to focus on other pressing needs of life.

Pros-Some of the advantages of Flutterwave includes open market opportunities, growing developer community, easy and secured payment across borders, improving payment performance metrics, inspiring more profitable businesses in the 21st-century, saves time, hassle and unnecessary cost for individuals. 

Cons-Elite market target. 

Conclusion 
Flutterwave is a rave of change that has happened to the payment system majorly across Africa and the rest of the world as it is simplifying and securing ways payments are made or received by businesses and individuals around the world to promote digital economy. Looking ahead into the 21st-century Flutterwave seems to be the next Unicorn company rising from Africa to the world in the payment industry as the company in the past 3 years have shown growth potential in volume of transactions, engaged developer community and organic revenue boom.