How Flutterwave Scandals Have Been Debunked Many Times Upon Arrival

For the past years, fintech has grown to become a substantial investment in the financial sector, as many firms believe that with the adaptation of fintech in Africa, offering financial services will become easier than relying on traditional banks. Even with that, some fintech companies, like Flutetrwave, amongst many others, have gotten into scandals in the past years.

Some allegations were levelled against the CEO and founder of Flutterwave, Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola by some employees who spoke about how toxic the work environment is.

Flutterwave, which was founded in 2016 in Lagos, Nigeria, has been providing customizable payment application programming interfaces for businesses operating in Africa while also assisting international firms like Uber and Booking.com to expand their business services across the continent. 

In Africa, Flutterwave has expanded to 34 countries across the continent and processed 200 million transactions, worth more than $16 to date. Records show that 900,000 businesses globally use the company’s service to process payments in 150 currencies and across different payment modes.

In 2021, the company achieved unicorn status and became the continent’s most valuable fintech start-up in February with a Series B funding round from investors including B Capital Group, Tiger Global, Whale Rock Capital, and Alta Park Capital, bringing the firm's valuation to more than $3 billion.

It didn’t take long after this milestone for the company to be accused of some scandals. The Flutterwave scandal started in April after Clara Odero, CEO of Kenyan fintech Credrails, and a former Flutterwave employee came out to accuse Mr Agboola of bullying her for a long period—-she also accused the company of being careless, which led to fraud. It didn’t take time for Mr Agboola to deny all the accusations levelled against him.

Also, some scandals were published in local media stating that Mr Agboola, the CEO of Flutterwave, had created a phantom co-founder identity to give himself more shares in the company's early years and had offered low prices to Flutterwave employees who wanted to buy shares. Concerning these allegations, Flutterwave dismissed such claims as false.

In the Statement published, the company said,

• Flutterwave is a private company, and we have followed all legal processes and procedures to allow third parties, including former employees, to sell their shares to other third parties,” the company told The Banker in a statement.

• As part of our commitment to operating an ethically responsible company in compliance with all applicable laws, we take claims of this nature seriously and act when appropriate to maintain high workplace standards.

With the scandals going on for a long time, the company came out with some positive business moves.

Flutterwave announced three partnerships that are expected to boost the business. On June 6, the company said it was going to partner with payment provider Token.io to provide merchants access to customers in the U.K. and Europe. On June 21, Flutterwave said it would provide payment services to popular U.S. music-streaming platform Audiomack, and the next day, Flutterwave entered into a year agreement with Microsoft to facilitate transactions on Azure across Africa. “With Flutterwave and Microsoft’s plans to power payments from Africa, this collaboration is an incredible opportunity to impact growth across the continent,” Flutterwave said.

Even after the partnership, a judge in the Kenyan High Court placed a ban on 45 bank accounts and 10 MPesa mobile money wallets belonging to Flutterwave. This was the result of a petition filed by more than 2,000 investors who claimed that Flutterwave teamed with sports betting company 86 Football Technology to scam them for $12.04 million. As such, Flutterwave denied the allegations.

However, Agboola said that the company’s account was frozen as a procedural step in a civil case. “The media has reported a baseless and misrepresenting account of the event,” he said.