Ripple takes equity stake in Flutterwave at $3.3 billion valuation

Ripple, the San Francisco-based blockchain payments company, has taken an equity stake in Flutterwave, the Nigerian-founded payments infrastructure company, in a deal that values Flutterwave at $3.3 billion and positions one of Africa's most valuable fintech companies at the centre of a fast-developing stablecoin payments corridor across the continent.

Flutterwave chief executive officer Olugbenga Agboola confirmed the valuation in an interview with Bloomberg published June 16, 2026. He declined to disclose the amount Ripple invested or the size of its shareholding. The investment is part of Flutterwave's ongoing Series E fundraising round. The company said further investor announcements are expected in the coming months.

"Ripple did invest significantly in Flutterwave, an actual cash investment, so they are now an equity shareholder of the company," Agboola told TechCabal. Ripple joined not only as a commercial partner but also as an equity investor, meaning it will participate in the company's future upside.

The partnership has an operational dimension that extends beyond the equity stake. Ripple's dollar-backed stablecoin RLUSD, which launched in December 2024, will be embedded directly into Flutterwave's payment rails and its Send App remittance product. The integration will go live across every country where Flutterwave operates, shaped by the specific regulatory requirements of each market. Flutterwave currently operates in 35 African countries.

The deal represents one of the most direct attempts yet to route real-world African commerce through stablecoin infrastructure rather than the correspondent banking networks that have historically dominated cross-border transactions on the continent. Africa's cross-border payments market has been constrained by high fees, fragmented banking relationships and multi-day settlement times. Ripple and Flutterwave are both positioning blockchain and stablecoins as an alternative settlement layer for those inefficiencies.

"We are aligned in our aim of making remittances faster and more efficient," Agboola said.

The Ripple investment adds to a stablecoin payment stack that Flutterwave has been assembling for more than a year. The company joined the Circle Payment Network in 2025, named Polygon its default settlement chain in October 2025, launched merchant stablecoin wallets with Turnkey and Nuvion in January 2026 and added Stripe-incubated Tempo as a settlement layer in June 2026. RLUSD and the XRP Ledger now sit inside that multi-rail setup, giving Flutterwave one of the most diversified stablecoin settlement architectures of any African fintech company.

Flutterwave has raised more than $500 million in total funding to date and has processed over one billion transactions valued at more than $50 billion, according to the company. In January 2026, it acquired Nigerian microfinance banking licence holder Mono in an open-banking deal and launched a multi-product platform spanning banking, payments and stablecoins. It was also selected in March 2026 as one of six firms in the Central Bank of Nigeria's Anti-Money Laundering supervision pilot for Virtual Asset Service Providers, signalling growing regulatory recognition of stablecoin infrastructure.

"Nobody has our infrastructure at scale right now," Agboola said. "We do not see competition for this."

The $3.3 billion valuation makes Flutterwave one of the most valuable African fintech companies in existence. It is a meaningful benchmark for a continental fintech market that saw investor appetite cool significantly from the peak funding years of 2021 and 2022, when Flutterwave was previously valued at $3 billion in a 2022 fundraising round. The Series E valuation effectively returns the company to and above that prior peak, reflecting the commercial momentum generated by its stablecoin strategy and banking licence acquisition.

Ripple, which is valued at approximately $50 billion, provides crypto payment solutions for businesses in more than 90 countries. Its investment in Flutterwave marks its most significant direct equity commitment to an African payments company and a strategic bet that stablecoin-powered settlement will reshape how money moves across the African continent over the next decade.