Nigerian tech entrepreneur Olugbenga Agboola's Flutterwave is acquiring an East African bank

Flutterwave is in the process of acquiring a bank in East Africa, its chief executive said, marking the start of an acquisition-led push to turn Africa's most valuable fintech into a licensed financial institution.

Olugbenga Agboola declined to name the target or the country. "We are currently in the process of acquiring another bank in another country," he told The Africa Report. "In other markets, I will go and look for partnerships that we can rely on."

The purchase would give Flutterwave an immediate regulatory foothold, a customer base and existing banking infrastructure, avoiding the years it takes to build a bank from nothing.

Agboola named Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda, Tanzania, South Africa and Egypt as strategically important markets, with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia under consideration for longer-term expansion. Entry will come through acquisitions, licences or partnerships depending on the regulatory environment in each country.

He was explicit that the aim is not a bank on every register. "The vision is not to form a bank in every country but to ensure that every African business has access to more than financial services," he said.

The company follows a strategy already visible in how it intends to deploy capital. Agboola would not disclose the total allocated to banking, but said 60% will support credit and liquidity buffers, 25% will fund lending and 15% will go into banking infrastructure.

What Flutterwave will not do is chase retail deposits. It plans to build around institutional deposits from businesses already inside its payments network, then use transaction data to move into short-term working capital, merchant finance, invoice discounting and trade finance for small and medium-sized businesses.

That structure lets it lend without the balance sheet exposure that comes with aggressive retail banking. Nigeria's non-performing loan ratio sits at roughly 7%, above the 5% regulatory benchmark, and conventional lenders have had to set aside substantial provisions against defaults.

"We're building a digital version of that traditional banking infrastructure for the next generation of African businesses," Agboola said, adding that the company is not trying to replace incumbent banks but to serve businesses they have not reached.

The move follows the Central Bank of Nigeria's approval of Flutterwave's banking licence and its acquisition of the open banking startup Mono, which had been backed by Tiger Global. Together they signal that banking will be the centre of the company's inorganic growth for the next several years.

Competitors are moving in the same direction. Moniepoint acquired Kenya's Sumac Microfinance Bank in March. Paystack bought Nigeria's Ladder Microfinance Bank. Established lenders including Access Bank, KCB Group and FirstRand have been acquiring fintechs to extend their own digital lending channels, so the traffic is running both ways.

The logic for a payments company is straightforward. Owning a licence removes dependence on partner banks for settlement, liquidity management and product approvals, which speeds up product launches and cuts operating costs.

Flutterwave has processed more than one billion transactions worth over $40 billion since its founding in 2016, and operates across 35 African countries.

Its valuation has risen to $3.3 billion following a funding round led by Ripple, the American blockchain company, which will also see Ripple's dollar-pegged stablecoin integrated into Flutterwave's payment options. That was the company's first round in four years. Total disclosed investment across a decade exceeds $500 million, from Visa, Mastercard, Salesforce, Tiger Global, Whale Rock Capital and Ripple.

Banking growth now sits ahead of the initial public offering that has been discussed since 2021.

Agboola said a listing is "definitely in our long-term roadmap" but will come only after sustainable profitability, diversified revenues and sufficient scale across payments, banking and remittances. He rejected suggestions that the company faces pressure to list or to sell.

"An IPO is a financing event, not a strategy," he said. "We are not holding any pressure to go public. This gives us the flexibility to be patient and ensure when we do list, we're doing so from a position of strength."

He has been consistent on that point. He told Bloomberg in February 2025 that the offering would only happen once the company was profitable, and told The Africa Report in December that Flutterwave was "not in the IPO race."

He has also set out where he thinks it ends. Asked in April about the company's trajectory, he said that within ten years Flutterwave would be either the JP Morgan of Africa or acquired by one.