Flutterwave Bank Acquisition: Payment Giant Plans to Buy a Bank in East Africa
Africa’s biggest payments company wants to become a bank. Flutterwave is working on a Flutterwave bank acquisition in East Africa, though its boss won’t say which bank or which country yet.
Olugbenga Agboola, the company’s chief executive, confirmed the deal in an interview with The Africa Report. He called it the first step in a bigger plan to turn Flutterwave from a payments company into a licensed financial institution. “We are currently in the process of acquiring another bank in another country,” he said. “In other markets, I will go and look for partnerships that we can rely on.”
Buying an existing bank makes sense for one main reason: speed. When Flutterwave buys a bank, it instantly gets a banking licence, real customers, and working systems. Building all of that from zero would take years.
Where This Bank Acquisition Strategy Is Headed
Agboola named six countries as top targets: Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda, Tanzania, South Africa, and Egypt. The company may also expand later into the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia. Flutterwave will pick a different path in each country — buying a bank, applying for a licence, or forming a partnership — depending on local rules.
Agboola kept the goal narrow, though. “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. Flutterwave doesn’t plan to open a bank branch everywhere. Instead, it wants to add banking tools to the payments network it already runs across 35 countries.
Agboola also shared how the company will split its banking investment. Credit and liquidity buffers will get 60% of the money. Lending will get 25%. Infrastructure will take the remaining 15%. He did not share the total dollar amount behind these numbers.
Why Flutterwave Is Avoiding Retail Deposits
Here’s the more interesting part: Flutterwave doesn’t want to compete for everyday customer savings accounts. Instead, the company plans to rely on deposits from the businesses that already use its payment network. It will use their transaction data to offer short-term loans, merchant financing, invoice discounting, and trade finance to small and medium-sized businesses.
This approach protects Flutterwave from a major risk. Nigeria’s bad-loan rate sits near 7%, higher than the 5% limit regulators prefer, and many traditional banks have lost money covering those bad loans. By lending money based on real, verified business transactions instead of unsecured personal credit, Flutterwave hopes to grow its loan business safely.
“We’re building a digital version of that traditional banking infrastructure for the next generation of African businesses,” Agboola said. He made clear that Flutterwave isn’t trying to replace existing banks. Instead, it wants to serve businesses that those banks have ignored.
A Wider Pattern Among African Fintechs
Flutterwave isn’t the only company chasing this strategy. Nigeria’s central bank already approved a banking licence for Flutterwave, and the company also bought Mono, an open banking startup once backed by Tiger Global. Together, these moves show that buying banking businesses will drive Flutterwave’s growth for years to come.
Competitors are following the same playbook. Moniepoint bought Kenya’s Sumac Microfinance Bank in March. Paystack bought Nigeria’s Ladder Microfinance Bank. At the same time, older banks like Access Bank, KCB Group, and FirstRand are buying fintech startups to build their own digital lending tools. Both sides are meeting in the middle.
Owning a bank licence brings real benefits for a payments company. It removes the need to depend on partner banks for handling money transfers, which speeds up new product launches and lowers costs.
Flutterwave says it has processed more than $40 billion through over a billion transactions since 2016. Its value jumped to $3.3 billion after a recent funding round led by Ripple, the US blockchain company. Ripple will also add its dollar-linked stablecoin to Flutterwave’s payment system. This funding round was Flutterwave’s first in four years. Earlier backers include Visa, Mastercard, Salesforce, Tiger Global, and Whale Rock Capital, who together have invested more than $500 million in the company.
Why the IPO Keeps Getting Delayed
Flutterwave has talked about going public since 2021, but that plan seems to be taking a back seat to its banking push. Agboola called a stock market listing “definitely in our long-term roadmap.” But he said it depends on the company becoming reliably profitable, building multiple income sources, and growing large enough across payments, banking, and money transfers first.
“An IPO is a financing event, not a strategy,” Agboola said, rejecting the idea that Flutterwave feels pressure to go public or sell itself.
He gave Bloomberg a similar message in February 2025, saying a public listing would wait until the company turns a steady profit. He also told The Africa Report in December that Flutterwave was “not in the IPO race.”
What has changed is how big the company’s ambitions have grown. When asked in April where Flutterwave is headed, Agboola gave a bold answer: within ten years, Flutterwave will either become the JPMorgan of Africa, or a bigger company will buy it.
Agboola still hasn’t revealed which bank Flutterwave wants to buy, in which country, or for how much money. Those missing details — along with how fast regulators move — will show whether this deal becomes a model for the five to seven similar deals a true pan-African banking expansion would need.
