Flutterwave is overhauling its payment infrastructure to run on stablecoins, replacing the slow and costly correspondent banking system that has long been a bottleneck for cross-border trade in Africa. The Lagos-founded company will embed dollar-backed digital currencies that settle in seconds rather than days, creating a direct settlement layer between African businesses and global markets.
Ripple’s strategic bet on Flutterwave
Blockchain payments company Ripple has made a strategic investment in Flutterwave as part of the African payments firm’s ongoing Series E funding round, valuing the company at $3.2 billion. The deal marks Flutterwave’s first major fundraising announcement since February 2022; the exact amount of Ripple’s contribution has not been disclosed.
“This investment marks a pivotal moment in our journey,” said Olugbenga Agboola, Flutterwave’s co‑founder and chief executive. “By unlocking faster settlement and lower-cost cross‑border payments, we are building a payment superhighway that connects African commerce directly to the global economy.”
How stablecoins will reshape cross‑border payments
Cross‑border payments in Africa remain among the most expensive in the world. Businesses moving money between markets routinely pay steep foreign exchange fees, wait two to five business days for settlement, and navigate a fragmented banking infrastructure that was never designed for digital commerce. Stablecoins – dollar‑backed digital tokens – are increasingly seen as a way to bypass those bottlenecks entirely, offering programmable, near‑instant settlement at a fraction of the cost.
Under the partnership, Flutterwave will integrate three elements of Ripple’s technology directly into its payment rails:
- RLUSD, Ripple’s USD‑denominated stablecoin, will become a primary settlement asset for high‑volume payment channels and for remittance corridors served by Flutterwave’s Send App.
- The XRP Ledger will be used for faster transaction clearing.
- A unified API will connect Flutterwave’s domestic network with Ripple Payments, Ripple’s global payments network that has already processed over $70 billion across more than 90 markets.
The result, the company says, will be a settlement layer that bypasses the correspondent banking system – a chain of intermediary banks that currently adds days and opaque foreign‑exchange margins of 2 to 4 per cent to every transaction. With stablecoins, settlement becomes near‑instant, liquidity is guaranteed, and pricing is predictable.
Ripple has been steadily building its presence in Africa ahead of this deal. It has already rolled out RLUSD through partnerships with Chipper Cash, VALR and Yellow Card. Its 2025 New Value Report found that 64 per cent of finance leaders in the Middle East and Africa cited faster settlement and reduced costs as the primary reasons for integrating blockchain‑based currencies into payment flows. Backing Flutterwave, a company that has processed over one billion transactions worth more than $50 billion, takes that strategy to a different scale entirely.
From Lagos startup to Africa’s payments infrastructure
Flutterwave was founded in 2016 by Agboola, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji and Adeleke Adekoya to solve a problem that was simple to describe and hard to fix: making it easier for African businesses to accept and send payments. At the time, accepting a payment from a customer in one African country and settling it to a merchant in another could involve half a dozen intermediaries, each taking a cut and adding days to the process.
The company, headquartered in San Francisco with significant operations across Africa including Nigeria as its primary hub, works by sitting between the business and the fragmented patchwork of local banks, telecom‑run mobile money systems and card networks that make up the continent’s payments landscape. It enables businesses to accept cards, bank transfers and mobile wallet payments across markets through a single integration, and has expanded into remittances, merchant services and enterprise payments.
Today Flutterwave operates in more than 30 African countries and has raised more than $500 million in total. Notable rounds include a $170 million Series C in 2021 that gave it unicorn status, a $250 million Series D in 2022 that valued it at over $3 billion, and the current Series E at $3.2 billion. The new capital will be used to scale its infrastructure and expand its stablecoin‑enabled payments roadmap, covering settlement, liquidity and cross‑border corridors across the continent.
Flutterwave has faced challenges along the way. In July 2022 the company was subject to money‑laundering allegations in Kenya that led to frozen accounts; the Assets Recovery Agency later withdrew its case and the accounts were unfrozen. There were also allegations of misconduct against Agboola and Flutterwave in April 2022.
The company’s positioning differs from that of its main rivals. Competitor Moniepoint, which closed a $200 million Series C round in October 2025 and holds a unicorn valuation above $1 billion, is scaling business banking infrastructure. Chipper Cash, which once reached a $2 billion valuation on the back of backing from the now‑collapsed FTX and SVB Capital, competes in remittances and consumer transfers. Flutterwave is positioning itself as the settlement infrastructure layer sitting underneath African commerce, with blockchain rails running alongside traditional ones.
“Flutterwave has built one of the most advanced payments networks in Africa, and as its infrastructure evolves, stablecoins are becoming central to that story,” said Reece Merrick, managing director for Middle East and Africa at Ripple.
