HAPPY NEW YEAR AGAIN!

2018 was quite a remarkable year for us at Flutterwave Inc.

We experienced significant positive changes in our operations, and spruced up two of our products towards friendlier user experiences for our customers, expanded our teams locally and internationally, and received some industry recognition and awards. We expanded our licenses and certifications in countries where we operate which enables us to provide our services with the highest level of security & regulatory oversight.

You may also have heard that we successfully completed the Series A extension round of financing in October, with investments from Mastercard as well as welcomed former chairman and CEO of Visa, Joe Saunders, to the Board of Directors.

Now, to the meat of the meal;

We saw a 550% growth in the customer base of Flutterwave for Business (Rave) made possible by partnerships with our existing customers. We retained our key partnerships within the financial industry, enterprise customers like Uber, Arik Air, Booking.com and Flywire. Some of our newer customers include DusuPay (Uganda), BroadPay (Zambia) and PennySmart (Ghana). Thanks to the 26,000 businesses on Rave that trusted us to help to grow their business.

I earlier mentioned we spruced up two of our products –  Rave, (Flutterwave for Business), is now connected to Xero, Quickbooks, Sage and Zoho! We connected to these powerful tools to help our local and international customers better track their expenses and sales. Rave also got a new checkout button at the tail-end of 2018. Better late than never, right? Rave’s new checkout button is smart, data-driven, tailored to fit the needs of both the merchant and their customers, and if we’re being honest, quite beautiful to look at. You can learn more about the checkout button and everything that went into designing, building, and going live on our blog.

We welcomed new wavers to the family all across our different locations in the world, with our budding developer community, that means more innovative and interesting minds to work on the products you have come to love and enjoy.

Next up, we revamped Barter (Flutterwave for Consumers). What started off as a web app designed to help our local customers create instant VISA & Mastercards for everyday international merchant payments morphed into a powerful app that lets them pay bills, buy tickets, send money, and of course, create instant VISA Cards.  Barter today has over 30,000 customers. We are excited about the new app and are thrilled at the possibility of what’s to come in 2019. Without the collective work of our team, both Rave and Barter wouldn’t be thriving and making waves both at home and in our international countries.


Speaking of international countries, Flutterwave is now licensed in the United Kingdom & Zambia for payment processing & electronic remittances; 

The journey to getting licensed in these three countries came with its fair share of challenges, highs, lows, discouraging moments, frustrating hours, processes, paperwork, small wins, and eventually, a pleasing outcome. We’ll share more details about the journey, and what being licensed means for us globally, at the end of Q1, 2019. 

Whilst keeping a watchful eye on our precious Customers, another very important aspect of our business is standardization & security and in 2018 we set to cross a few t’s and dot some i’s. We are proud to share these  achievements;

On the 30th of November, we received the ‘Best Payments Company’ award at the Ghana eCommerce Awards ceremony. 

If I were to be known by one thing, it would be my love for people. The people at Flutterwave make up the company; they are the limbs, backbone, brain, and heart of the business.

You might be wondering what our numbers look like in terms of customer insights, here it is;

This year in review wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t highlight the work our developer community was doing with our APIs;

Whew! I could go on about our achievements and updates, but I believe I have painted a clear picture of the year we’ve had since January 1st, 2018. This year would not have been as successful and magical  without our community of customers, partners, investors, board members, and team members. 

We are an extremely customer focused brand and we will prove how much we value our customers not just with words, but with actions. We are a people who are loyal to not only the company but to each other; we value trust and we make it a duty to communicate respectfully. I firmly believe that a company can only be as successful as its people; we aren’t just in it for paydays, bonuses and holiday parties on the beach – we are in it for the business of Flutterwave.

Its not all work and no fun for us at Flutterwave, we rounded off the year with our end of year retreat, FLYE2018, spoke on Blockchain and its great potential in the health sector in Nigeria at TechCrunch and powered Uber’s first offline event – UberLive with Teni the Entertainer (one of my favourite Nigerian artistes!), Falz and of course, Burna Boy.

2018 was a year of growth, excellence, and so much more. 

Thank you for finishing off the year with us and we look forward to an exciting and rewarding  journey with  you in 2019. 

We wish you a truly fulfilling, exciting and productive 2019.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 

Bring on 2019 with all its excitements, highs and lows!

Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola

 
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