Flutterwave, a payments startup, has completed its Series A Extension round of financing. The investment came from Mastercard, CRE Ventures, Fintech Collective, 4DX Ventures, Raba Capital and more.
The round brought Flutterwave's total funding raised to-date to at least $20 million. Currently, their largest investors include Green Visor Capital and Greycroft Partners.
As part of the deal, current Green Visor Capital Chairman & General Partner and former Chairman & CEO of Visa, Joe Saunders, joined the Flutterwave Board of Directors.
Though the startup didn't point out how much, the figure is likely to be at least $9 million. This is because Flutterwave announced the raising of $10 million mid last year. This brought their total amount of funding then to $10.1 million. There was no other funding announced between.
Africa is becoming the payments battleground for the world's largest payments multinationals.
Last month, Visa and Tencent participated in Paystack's $8 million Series A. While Mastercard announced a partnership that will allow MTN Mobile Money users to make online purchases using virtual cards. The company has now followed this up with investing in Flutterwave.
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In the same press release, Flutterwave announced that their CEO was stepping down. The reason behind the move was personal and involved pursuing 'family goals'.
"In a separate development, Flutterwave CEO, Iyin Aboyeji, has stepped down," wrote Fluttewave. Iyin wrote; "It’s been amazing working with the Flutterwave team to build another great African company and I’m excited for the future under its new leadership.”
Iyinoluwa - who is still just 27 years - cofounded Andela in 2014 before leaving to co-found Flutterwave in 2016. He has come to brand himself as a problem solver rather than a startup founder. Therefore, it is highly likely that there's another problem he is looking to bring a solution to life for.
Given his previous track record with the two now globally recognized startups, capital, talent, and partnerships aren't likely to be his main hurdles.
Another co-founder - who has before worked at Paypal and Google will take the reins.
"Flutterwave Co-Founder, Olugbenga Agboola, will replace Iyin Aboyeji as CEO. Olugbenga Agboola is a Financial Technology Engineer, with core financial services technology experiences with Paypal, Google, GTBank, Access bank, Standard /StanbicIBTC Bank."
Headquartered in San Francisco, Flutterwave currently has regional offices in Lagos, Nairobi, Accra, and Johannesburg. It also has operations in Uganda. Flutterwave's clients include Transferwise, Flywire, Booking.com, JumiaPay, and Uber, among others.