Flutterwave, Africa’s most valuable fintech company, has closed a Series E funding round at a $3.25 billion valuation following a strategic equity investment from Ripple, the US-based blockchain payments firm. Founder and CEO Olugbenga “GB” Agboola confirmed the deal on LinkedIn, disclosing that Ripple has become a direct shareholder of the company.
The investment amount was not made public. Agboola described it as “an actual cash investment,” confirming that Ripple is now an equity shareholder in Flutterwave. He added that the round was a primary investment, with proceeds going directly onto Flutterwave’s balance sheet.
Why Ripple
Agboola cited three factors behind the choice of Ripple as a strategic partner: its technology infrastructure, its regulatory credibility, and its ability to move money more cheaply and quickly across borders.
The partnership is not purely financial. Both companies will integrate RLUSD, Ripple’s dollar-backed stablecoin, into Flutterwave’s payment infrastructure, giving the company’s merchants and consumers the ability to send, hold, and convert money using stablecoins.
Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin and the XRP Ledger will plug directly into Flutterwave’s existing payment rails to power cross-border settlement across the continent. For Ripple, the deal represents an entry point into Africa’s fast-growing market for dollar-denominated payments, which Mastercard projects will reach $1.5 trillion by 2030.
Stablecoin Strategy, Not Just a Round
The Ripple investment is the latest in a series of stablecoin moves Flutterwave has been executing over the past year. The company joined the Circle Payment Network in 2025, designated Polygon as its default settlement chain in October 2025, launched merchant stablecoin wallets in January 2026, and added Stripe-incubated Tempo as a settlement layer in June 2026. RLUSD and the XRP Ledger now sit inside that multi-rail setup.
On how RLUSD will work in practice, Agboola described a model where customers choose their preferred stablecoin at the point of a transaction and can deposit local currency, convert to stablecoin, and transfer or reverse the process at will. He said the RLUSD integration will go live in every country where Flutterwave operates, shaped by the specific regulatory requirements of each market.
One-Stop Platform Ambitions
The Ripple deal arrives as Flutterwave advances a broader platform strategy. The company now runs a multi-product stack spanning banking, payments, and stablecoins, and has described its goal as becoming a one-stop shop for financial services. Agboola said Flutterwave’s compliance frameworks and banking rails across multiple markets are expensive and difficult for rivals to replicate, infrastructure he argues gives the company a structural edge.
