Flutterwave : Building the Future of Payments in Africa

Over the past two years, Andela has grown from humble beginnings, as a small team huddled in a corner of Co-creation Hub in Yaba, into a 250-person organization spanning three continents. Today, Andela developers are working on mission-critical projects for dozens of world-class technology organizations in both the U.S. and Africa, and most importantly, Andela has become a shining symbol of a hopeful and bright future for Africa.

This is what makes the news I am about to share bittersweet. After the last two years of amazing work building Andela, it’s now time for me to extend the vision by leading the charge to build one of the critical pieces of infrastructure necessary for building the future of Africa.

Today, I’m excited to share that I am launching a new company called Flutterwave together with a group of FinTech experts who have experience working in African banks as well as leading tech firms including PayPal and Google Wallet.

Flutterwave is a solution to some of the major challenges I’ve witnessed while building Andela. Despite all the entrepreneurial spirit and expertise in Lagos, businesses still have trouble conducting transactions that are an afterthought in most of the world. It’s a problem that is prohibitive to the future growth of the continent, and one that we felt we could no longer ignore. So we decided to do something about it.

Flutterwave is building digital payments infrastructure accessible via APIs that enable all available payment options across different African countries. Our API allows businesses accept and disburse payments from MasterCard, Visa, Verve, Mobile Money, ACH — and even cash tokens and e-wallets in different African countries by integrating one API. Our technology will enable the next generation of technology leaders in Africa to launch and support businesses that will scale — not only across Africa, but across the U.S. and other major international markets.

Today, I am also finally able to announce that Flutterwave has been accepted into Y Combinator, the most prestigious tech incubator in the world! Needless to say, I will remain close to both Andela and its mission as an advisor to the company.

Those of you who know me well know what matters most to me is building the future of our continent. I am so proud of what we have achieved in these two short years at Andela in pursuit of this mission. It’s been an honor to work with the Andela team and all of the Andela Fellows, who are proving every day that brilliance is evenly distributed around the world.

While I am sad to be scaling back my involvement with Andela at such an exciting time in its evolution, I am fully confident in the team’s ability to execute on Andela’s vision. Seni Sulyman, Director of Andela Lagos, has spent several years driving strategy and execution for some of today’s most important technology companies, and there’s no doubt in my mind that he will be instrumental in driving Andela closer to its goal of producing 100,000 developers across Africa in the next ten years.

I know that Flutterwave is just the first of hundreds of companies that will be formed by Andela alumni and I look forward to a day when Flutterwave is the platform responsible for driving their growth!

Let’s get to work building the future together.

#TIA,

Iyin