Nigeria accounted for almost 90% of Flutterwave’s $2 billion worth of transactions in 2017

Global payment technology company, Flutterwave says it processed $2billion in transaction value in 2017, up from $200 million the year before.

The first thought that came to my mind when I saw this, was “Who was processing these transactions before the company was set up? Did the company get business from already existing providers or this was new business? Which of its operating countries accounted for this tidy sum? To have increased transactions by 900% in one year with just three products is no small feat. It was also able to grew the number of banks connected to its infrastructural network from 6 to 43 in 2017.

Talking with the CEO and co-founder, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji , he says almost 90% of the business for 2017 was from Nigeria and a lot of it was new business. He however adds that a lot of the transaction volume came by working with existing partners like banks. Flutterwave was able to take on the technical aspects of what the banks were building while the banks focussed on business development and marketing.

For those not conversant with Flutterwave, the company was founded in 2016 by a team of ex-bankers, entrepreneurs and engineers and it is led by ex-Andela co-founder, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji . It is headquartered in San Francisco and has offices in Lagos, Nairobi, Accra, and Johannesburg.

Flutterwave is focused on helping banks and businesses provide seamless and secure payment experiences for their customers.

Its award-winning payments infrastructure enables banks, payments companies, and businesses to:

• Accept any payment method from customers around the world online or in-store with Rave.
• Make payments to anyone around the world with Moneywave.
• Issue and manage virtual and physical cards for retail, loyalty and expense management via Barter.

And its payments infrastructure is accessible via USSD, Mobile, Point of Sale and Web channels.

• Payments infrastructure with fewer failed transactions, even when everyone else is down.
• International payments without the rain of chargebacks. Going global at the click of a button.
• 24/7 customer care for you and for your customers.
• Offer lower fees and customer discounts that don’t eat into your profits.

Iyinola is very optimistic about the opportunities in Nigeria. According to him, “Nigeria remains the most scalable market for anything technology and there is a lot of opportunity here”.

I wish Flutterwave all the best this new year.