Flutterwave secures Nigerian banking license after crossing $40 billion in lifetime payments

Flutterwave, a pan-African fintech, has secured a national microfinance banking licence in Nigeria, allowing it to hold customer deposits and issue loans directly for the first time in its biggest market. 

The license, which came through Flutterwave’s acquisition of open banking startup Mono in January, marks a turning point for a company that has spent a decade moving money for businesses and consumers. Flutterwave is now positioning itself as the infrastructure its customers bank on, a move with direct implications for its margins, IPO timeline, and relationship with the commercial banks it has long depended on. 

The license removes the company’s dependence on third-party banks for virtual accounts, cards, and fund settlement and will improve margins, its chief executive officer said. Flutterwave is not alone in this move. Three months ago, Paystack acquired a Nigerian microfinance bank, giving it the same ability to offer banking services to business customers.

“$40 billion has gone through our platform. That is not double-counting, and not one cent was retained,” Flutterwave’s chief executive officer, Olugbenga Agboola, told TechCabal. “With this new phase of life, money now stays in our platform. Margins get better. That’s the value of owning infrastructure.”

Flutterwave has since injected additional capital to shore up the bank’s capitalisation, Agboola said.

Flutterwave Bank will operate as a subsidiary of Flutterwave’s Nigerian entity, with its own board and leadership team currently being constituted, a sign that the highest degree of corporate governance is key for Flutterwave, Agboola said. 

Flutterwave already processes payments for companies like Uber, Microsoft, and Netflix, giving it a base to cross-sell banking products. If it can convert its payment customers into banking customers, it gains access to low-cost funding for its lending operations, backed by years of transaction data and the open banking infrastructure it acquired through Mono.

“With Mono Mandate, which we just introduced, it allows us to recover funds across all customers’ bank accounts linked to their BVN,” said Abdulhamid Hassan, Mono’s CEO. “Lending is really big, but non-performing loans are the biggest issue for any lender. With Mono’s infrastructure, that would not be a headache for us.”

“We just have to focus on innovative ways to lend to these customers and make sure that those loans are helpful for their businesses,” he added. 

The new bank will be led by a fresh leadership team, separate from both the payments business and Mono’s existing management. Flutterwave’s Nigerian board chairman, a former director of the Central Bank of Nigeria, will help constitute the bank’s governance structure.

For years, Flutterwave helped these businesses move money, a low-margin business model built on volume. Banking them would allow Flutterwave to deepen each relationship and extract more revenue per customer, a shift that would improve unit economics and strengthen the company’s position ahead of a potential acquisition or IPO.

Since January, the Central Bank of Nigeria has moved toward more coordinated licensing for fintechs with nationwide operations. Given the capital requirements involved, acquiring a microfinance bank has become the most efficient path to regulatory certainty, product expansion, and scale. 

A banking license carries new security and regulatory obligations, but Mo Bammeke, chief compliance officer at Flutterwave, says the bank is prepared. “The infrastructure is already built to withstand a bank. It’s already at that global scale, both from a security perspective and also from a compliance perspective.”

What changes for Flutterwave

Flutterwave’s banking licence unlocks several product shifts that Flutterwave plans to roll out in the near term.

Account numbers generated through Flutterwave’s checkout system will no longer come from partner banks. Payouts to merchants and businesses will run on Flutterwave’s own rails rather than third-party settlement infrastructure. 

“Our infrastructure today has its faults, not because of our technology limitations but because of reliance on third parties,” Agboola said. “All of that becomes a thing of the past. To own our account number infrastructure, issuing cards, and doing the acquiring directly will abstract away a lot of the issues that we used to have before because now it will be native to our infrastructure.”

The company also plans to issue payment cards to its two million Send App consumer users and four million business customers, though it is still selecting a card network partner, Agboola said. The bank will also have branches in Lagos and Abuja.

Send App, Flutterwave’s remittance product, will evolve into a consumer banking service. Flutterwave for Business, its merchant platform, will become the backbone of a business banking offering.

“Businesses will not just process payments through us. They can do global payments with us,” Agboola said.

The company is also reviving Flutterwave Capital, a business lending product that ran as a beta in 2022. Abdulhamid Hassan, the CEO of Mono, said the relaunched product will use Flutterwave’s transaction data and Mono’s open banking infrastructure to credit score borrowers and recover funds across all bank accounts linked to a borrower’s Bank Verification Number.

How Flutterwave wants to compete

Flutterwave joins several Nigerian fintechs like Moniepoint, OPay, PalmPay and Piggyvest, which hold their own banking licences.

But Flutterwave argues its competitive advantage lies in its combination of assets: a switching and processing licence, an international money transfer operator licence, Mono’s open banking infrastructure, and now a banking licence, layered on top of a payments network spanning more than 35 countries with over 50 global licences.

“Flutterwave wants to be critical infrastructure, and we’re going to take time to build it well,” Agboola said. “Imagine you can make anything your account number. Imagine you can sweep your money from any bank in Nigeria to a Flutterwave Bank account. That exists today, by the way.

“You can basically run your entire treasury infrastructure as a business, as a small business, as a large business, as a consumer, all through one platform or infrastructure,” he added.

The banking licence also shifts Flutterwave’s relationship with the commercial banks that have historically served as its settlement partners. Rather than those banks bearing risk on behalf of Flutterwave’s customers, the relationship now moves to an equal footing, counterparty risk only, with Flutterwave’s accounts insured by the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation.

“They don’t have to take the risk anymore,” Agboola said. “Our customers belong to us, because we are also licensed by the same regulator.”

Profitability, IPO, and Flutterwave’s ten-year vision

Agboola, who told Bloomberg in December that he expected Flutterwave to reach group-level profitability in 2026, said the banking licence would have a “very positive impact” on margins.

“Charity begins at home,” Agboola said. “If we take care of the IPO, we will start from Nigeria first,” he added about the company’s initial public offering. 

The comment suggests Flutterwave may be considering a Nigerian listing, either as a primary or dual listing, before or alongside any international offering, marking a departure from the Nasdaq-first narrative the company has maintained for years.

Agboola also confirmed that Flutterwave intends to pursue banking licences in other African markets. “Yes, we will. It’s coming soon,” he said, without specifying which countries.

On Flutterwave’s broader ambitions, the CEO was unequivocal. “In ten years’ time, I see that Flutterwave will be either the JP Morgan of Africa or acquired by one, frankly,” he said. “In ten years’ time, one out of every three transactions in Africa should have something to do with Flutterwave.”

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story misstated Flutterwave’s transaction value as $50 billion. It has now been corrected to $40 billion.