Flutterwave, Africa’s most valuable fintech, has acquired a microfinance bank (MfB) license from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), signalling a strategic transition from a pure-play payment gateway into a direct banking competitor.

The move, announced by the company’s CEO Olugbenga Agboola, allows the $3bn unicorn to hold funds and deposits directly. By controlling the full value chain of its transactions, Flutterwave is positioning itself to compete head-on with established mobile money and direct banking operators like OPay and Moniepoint.

In a statement, Flutterwave described the license as a defining step in its ten-year operational history. “A decade ago, we started with a simple belief: better infrastructure changes everything,” Agboola stated, noting that fragmented payment rails previously forced businesses to rebuild infrastructure from scratch. “We can now build, innovate, and solve customer problems faster… our destiny is now in our hands.”

The license will enable the rollout of a unified platform where businesses can manage their entire financial operations — opening accounts, processing payroll, executing cross-border payouts, and accessing working capital — without relying on third-party banking intermediaries.

The MfB license acquisition follows Flutterwave’s purchase of Nigerian open-banking startup Mono in January 2026. The integration of Mono’s data-scraping and payment-initiation APIs was the precursor to this broader banking strategy, allowing Flutterwave to evolve into a vertically integrated financial “super-stack.”

Factfile: Flutterwave

• Scale: Operates in 34 African countries with over 700 employees, serving approximately 26,000 businesses.
• Valuation & Backing: A $3bn private company backed by Y-Combinator, Tiger Global Management, Visa, and Mastercard. Total funds raised exceed $474m.
• Financial Performance: Reached $95.3m in revenue in 2024. In H1 2025, the company processed close to $1bn in Africa–Asia transactions, with enterprise total payment volume (TPV) growing 20% year-on-year.
• Core Products: Flutterwave for Business (API toolkit supporting 150+ currencies), Send App (remittance), and a Mobile Wallet for merchants.
• Headwinds: The company continues to navigate a complex regulatory environment across its operational footprint. It faced a one-month suspension of remittance partnerships by the Bank of Ghana in September 2025 over compliance breaches, and blocked a network intrusion in May 2024 linked to a high-profile ₦2.9bn portal theft investigation.