Several institutional players have taken a keen interest in cryptocurrency organizations after realizing that using digital assets was the way to go. This sudden boom was earlier focussed in regions such as the US and Europe but now countries in Africa were also giving it a run for its money.
Just recently, Flutterwave, a fintech company headquartered in San Fransisco announced that they had completed a massive $35 million fundraising round, The company also partnered with two major companies.
On January 22nd, Flutterwave revealed that they had partnered with Visa and WorldPay to expand in Northern and Francophone Africa. The $35 million funding round was expected to fund this very expansion. Flutterwave was founded by Iyinoluwa Aboyeji and Olugbenga Agboola, two entrepreneurs from Nigeria who wanted to contribute towards Africa’s booming fintech economy.
Visa and WorldPay first took interest in Flutterwave because of the wave it specialized in individual and consumer transfers. The company was one of several organizations in Africa which aimed to solve real-world problems using blockchain and crypto. Following the partnership announcement, Agboola stated:
“For us at Flutterwave, we have been focused on enterprise clients and now we are going to deepen that and also show how we can help small businesses scale their business when they use us as their payment partner. That’s a major goal for this investment for us.”
The partnership entails Flutterwave becoming the sole African payment provider for Worldpay’s worldwide client base. Worldpay had earlier stated that it trusts Flutterwave’s proprietary technology to allow it to penetrate the African market. With Worldpay’s involvement, Flutterwace will become the latest organization to open up the world of digital assets for Africa.
Flutterwave follows in the steps of cryptocurrency companies like Electroneum who have solidified their African foundation. Electroneum has also gone as far as improving mobile connectivity in countries such as Nigeria and Uganda.
Visa’s interest in Flutterwave started way back when the latter began its services. The credit and debit card giant was one of the first buy-ins to Flutterwave. Visa had joined Flutterwave on a consumer payment platform called Barter in 2019 with an aim to boost the cross border transactions sector.
Flutterwave is expected to continue raising the bar with Visa and even have plans to launch physical and virtual Visa cards. The Flutterwave co-founders were confident that the company can function as a bridge to connect multiple regions, regardless of boundaries. This rampant development has been one of the main reasons why Flutterwave’s backers include Green Vison, Greycroft & eVentures and CRE Ventures.
Countries in Africa are now being looked at as prospective regions for massive growth. Some financial analysts claim that opening up the developing countries in Africa can result in a GDP jump of $3.7 trillion. They also expect more companies to expand their services in Africa by first making it easy to use.
Source:TheNewYorkTimes
