African payments startup Flutterwave secured a strategic equity investment from Ripple as part of a Series E funding round that values the company at $3.2 billion. As reported by TechCrunch, the transaction lifts Flutterwave’s total funding to more than $500 million. The deal expands Flutterwave’s stablecoin payments strategy as the company looks to make cross-border transactions faster and cheaper across Africa.
The funding supports a product roadmap that would connect Flutterwave’s payments infrastructure across 35 African countries with Ripple’s global enterprise financial network. Cross-border business transactions on the continent often face bottlenecks, including fragmented banking networks and strict foreign exchange controls. Flutterwave previously expanded its engineering footprint through the acquisition of banking startup Mono and an October 2025 partnership with Polygon Labs.
Ripple’s investment centers on three product integrations. Flutterwave will embed Ripple’s stablecoin, RLUSD, into its primary payment corridors and Send App remittance platform. The company will also route transaction clearing through the XRP Ledger and use a unified API to link its domestic network with Ripple’s global payments infrastructure.
By combining localized card, wallet, and bank transfer capabilities with blockchain systems, Flutterwave aims to give corporate clients faster transaction clearing. Managing Director at Ripple Reece Merrick stated, "Our investment will establish RLUSD within that infrastructure, with Flutterwave driving stablecoin flows over the XRPL."
Flutterwave has processed more than one billion transactions valued at over $50 billion. CEO Olugbenga Agboola stated, "By unlocking faster settlement and lower-cost cross-border payments, we are building a payment superhighway."
