Ripple backs Flutterwave's Series E at a $3.2B valuation

What's the deal? Flutterwave, Africa's leading payments infrastructure company, has raised a Series E round that values the business at $3.2 billion, backed by a strategic investment from Ripple, the US-based blockchain payments firm. The two companies didn't disclose the size of Ripple's cheque. Flutterwave's founder and CEO, Olugbenga “GB” AgboolaDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, said the capital will let the company scale its infrastructure and expand its stablecoin-enabled payments roadmap.

What it means. The deal pairs the raise with a product integration: Ripple's dollar-backed stablecoin RLUSD, its payments network and the XRP Ledger plug into Flutterwave's rails and Send App remittance corridors, aimed at faster, cheaper cross-border settlement across the continent. The round is a step up from the $3 billion valuation Flutterwave reached in its February 2022 Series D, and lands as the company pulls more of its payments stack in-house — having raised over $500M and processed more than a billion transactions worth over $50B to date.

The signal: Ripple's participation as a corporate backer marks a notable crossover between blockchain-native firms and traditional fintech infrastructure, and signals growing global appetite for Africa's fast-expanding cross-border and stablecoin payments market.

Read more: Flutterwave