Global Courant
There is a modern axiom that says that we all live in a globalized world, where the internet has enabled citizens of every country in the world to connect directly with each other. But for many individuals and businesses in Africa, that has never been true. But Olugbenga Agboola is changing that.
As the founder of Flutterwave, a based in Nigeria fintech platform that provides payment services to businesses in Africa, Olugbenga Agboola brings the reality of global connections to entrepreneurs across the African continent. And with those connections come opportunities. Small business owners and individual entrepreneurs in Africa now have the opportunity to sell their wares on the global stage.
“This is transformational,” he said. “At Flutterwave, we’re making an impact because what we’re doing is making sure that a small business that previously only sold to customers in Lagos, Nigeria can now sell to anyone around the world without having to do anything extra. That’s why we work hard. That dream requires us to do our job very well as a company to make that work.”
As Olugbenga, Agboola sounds especially enthusiastic help starters, it’s because he knows a thing or two about space. Since first launching Flutterwave in 2016, the company has broken nearly every record possible, quickly amassing a $1 billion valuation. As the company expanded across national borders and into other continents, it continued to raise the bar. The most recent valuation came in at just over $3 billion.
Agboola believes similar successes can come for other African startups, especially now that Flutterwave has made it faster and easier for them to move money. “Depending on how you look at it or the lens through which you look at it, Flutterwave can bring about a really impactful transformation for African entrepreneurs,” he said. “So while we work hard to create the best company and service possible, we are also helping to create a new wave of African entrepreneurs who see what we’ve done and can be inspired by it. They may think: ‘I’m going to try something too.’”
Not only does Flutterwave enable merchants to send and receive payments quickly and securely, but it has also launched several emergency services that take advantage of entrepreneurs by giving them easier access to foreign capital and a ready-made.
For example, the most recent product is called Shipping. It is a remittance service aimed at the African continent. For example, people living in Ghana can now receive money directly from relatives or supporters in the UK. Or take their digital store, which provides an online marketplace for African makers to sell their goods to people around the world.
Prior to the launch of Flutterwave, most African companies did not have access to direct payment options. Even if the company was international and used a bank with branches in two different countries, payments to employees, suppliers and others would take days.
Olugbenga Agboola jokes that it was often faster to withdraw cash from the bank, board a plane and distribute physical payments after landing than waiting for payments to clear the SWIFT system African countries used.
African entrepreneurs faced serious disadvantages when competing for funding, both on the continent and abroad. To create a better system, Agboola not only had to create a functional and easily adaptable payment platform. “One of the problems I noticed while working for a bank in Africa was that I knew that it was technologically possible to transfer money across national borders in seconds, but that was not allowed under national regulations unless we the SWIFT for that transfer, which would cost a premium,” he said. “So the urgent thing was to build a payment system that could connect every payment type, so that businesses could literally make that transfer in seconds, and make it as cheap as a local transfer.”
And that is exactly what Olugbenga Agboola did. Drawing on his experience at fintech companies such as PayPal and Google Wallet, he created a fast processing system which allows secure money transfers between African banks, businesses and individuals. “For me, a big part of the job is helping companies and entrepreneurs who are in Africa and want to come to Africa,” he said. “All these companies that operate globally and want to make payments in Africa, we can become a service to them, just as we are a service to local African companies. We wanted to enable companies to grow and expand across Africa and that is exactly what we have done.”
