Flutterwave ranked No.1 most innovative company

In another significant achievement for the highly lauded company, Flutterwave — which has the distinction of being one of only seven unicorns (a startup valued at over $1 billion) in Africa — was recently ranked as Fast Company’s 2024 No. 1 Most Innovative Company in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. 

“We’re thrilled,” said  Flutterwave founder and CEO Olugbenga “GB” Agboola. “Innovation is an integral part of our core values, which we continue to adopt across all parts of our business.”

 The yearly list honors businesses that make impactful advancements and reshape their industries through innovation.

Flutterwave earned a spot on the list for its highly inventive approach to fintech. Flutterwave is responsible for a significant portion of Africa’s payments and plays a vital role in maintaining the continent’s digital monetary infrastructure. Its current transaction count is 550 million unique transactions.

Creative beginnings

Flutterwave launched in 2016, at a time when moving money in Africa was mired in slow digital financial processes. When companies worked across national borders, they often endured logjams stretching from days to weeks to transfer funds, resulting in delays in paying workers, buying supplies, and meeting contracts.

Flutterwave was built to change that.

Drawing on Flutterwave founder and CEO Agboola’s tenures  at Google Wallet and PayPal, the company launched a platform to process digital payments at modern speeds. Flutterwave gave enterprise companies the ability to work faster without compromising security. The company’s early success revealed the need in the market, and Flutterwave exploded in popularity.

Today, it operates in a majority of Africa’s 54 countries and processes transactions in 150 different currencies.

The company has drawn the eyes of investors from Lagos to Silicon Valley, leading it to unicorn status and a 2022 valuation of $3 billion during its Series D fundraise.

A drive to innovate

Over the past year and a half, Flutterwave has made significant strides in expanding its services for global enterprise businesses. The company has developed solutions for payouts and collections that support the growth of multinationals across Africa.

 But while it was founded on a premise of making cross-national payments in Africa fast and easy, the company didn’t stop there. In the years since it launched, it has widely expanded its services. Today, it serves more than just enterprise clients, providing new ways for Africans to use the payment platform in life-changing ways.

 “Every day, we come to work, and we live and breathe innovation,” Agboola said.
 “We’ve since built out Africa’s biggest payment network by reach, created solutions that make payments solutions, currency exchanges, e-commerce, and remittances easier for global companies selling in Africa, local businesses, and Africans alike.”

Through its remittance service, known as Send App, Flutterwave allows members of the diaspora to wire money back to Africa in a fast and frictionless way. Currently, Send functions across the United States and Canada, as well as in many European countries.

Since 2021, a significant 70% of transactions on Send App were for family support, such as medical and educational payments. Users span generations — millennials make up over 50% of users, Generation Z 22%, and Generation X not far behind at 20%.

Partners in progress 

Fast Company’s recognition places the payments technology firm alongside other industry leaders like Nvidia, OpenAI, and YouTube, which have all previously been recognized for their forward-thinking approaches.

To enhance its engineering and product development, Flutterwave partnered with Microsoft to scale its payment solutions on the Seattle company’s cloud platform Azure.

Additionally, a collaboration with Token .io has enabled open banking for customers in the United Kingdom and the European Union, connecting African businesses to the wider global market. These partnerships have solidified Flutterwave’s position as a preferred payment technology provider for multinationals seeking to enter African markets.

In addition, the company’s collaboration with the streaming platform Audiomack allows African music artists to monetize their art, and Flutterwave’s integration with Google Pay, Apple Pay, and international card payments enables Send App users in the United States, Europe, and Canada to send money to Africa easily.

Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies list is a highly anticipated feature that identifies global leaders in innovation through a rigorous selection process. The comprehensive guide spans early-stage startups to some of the world’s most valuable companies, highlighting the bleeding edge of today’s tech landscape. The complete list is available online and in the iTunes app.

Brendan Vaughan, Fast Company’s editor-in-chief, said: “Our list of the Most Innovative Companies is both a comprehensive look at the innovation economy and a snapshot of the business trends that defined the year. We face daunting challenges on many fronts, but the solutions we celebrate in Most Innovative Companies give me plenty of hope about the future.”

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