Flutterwave's New Investor (Ripple) Is Also Its Infrastructure
Hey FinTech Fanatic!
Big news out of Africa yesterday. Flutterwave just announced a strategic investment from Ripple as part of its Series E, valuing the company at $3.2 billion.
What stands out to me is how Ripple is buying equity and becoming the infrastructure provider at the same time. That means their returns are tied not just to Flutterwave's valuation, but to how much RLUSD flows through those rails.
It's a model worth watching: invest in the company, then make sure your own product is the one that wins inside it.
For Flutterwave, the timing is smart. Nigeria's CBN just brought them into an AML supervision pilot for virtual asset providers in March, regulatory cover that makes this kind of stablecoin infrastructure play far more credible than it would have been two years ago.
Olugbenga Agboola is building what he calls a "payment superhighway" for African businesses. With Ripple now both a shareholder and a supplier, he's got a pretty motivated co-builder.
Scroll down to find out what else is shaping the FinTech industry. 👇See you tomorrow!
Cheers,
#FINTECHREPORT
📊 Mastercard reported strong Q1 FY26 results, with revenue rising 16% to $8.4 billion and value-added services revenue growing 22% to $3.5 billion. Beyond payments, Mastercard continues expanding into AI-powered commerce, digital identity, cybersecurity, open banking, and stablecoins. Read the full article here
INSIGHTS
📰 Payments are becoming the battleground for UK travel: A report from Ecommpay. Analysing the payment strategies of the top 10 UK OTAs, the report explores how wallets, BNPL, open banking, orchestration, and smarter routing can improve conversion, reduce false declines, and help recover part of the £16.5 billion in travel revenue linked to payment optimisation opportunities. Download the report here
FINTECH NEWS
🇵🇭 Ant International-backed Philippine FinTech Unicorn to file for IPO as soon as this month. Mynt, the operator of GCash, is reportedly preparing to file for an IPO that could raise more than $1 billion. The listing could become the country’s largest IPO in five years and one of the biggest in Philippine market history.
🇺🇸 Trading platform Robinhood to cut 10% of its workforce, as part of an effort to simplify management layers and improve efficiency. CEO Vlad Tenev said the company remains financially strong and will continue hiring selectively while focusing on a leaner organisational structure.
🇺🇸 FIS brings secondary loan trading into the modern era with the Trade & Distribution Manager. It provides real-time trade status visibility and integrates with FIS Commercial Loan Servicing, eliminating the data handoff that has historically created operational drag between front-office and back-office teams.
🇵🇭 FinTech titans GCash and Maya test IPO goals as the Philippine market thins. While GCash is reportedly targeting a domestic IPO on the Philippine Stock Exchange, Maya is considering a U.S. listing first to access deeper liquidity before pursuing a local debut, highlighting the growing maturity of the country’s FinTech sector.
PAYMENTS NEWS
🇳🇱 ACI Worldwide powers Rabobank’s Wero instant payments, advancing Europe’s real-time payments transformation. By orchestrating payment flows, liquidity management and real-time clearing across SEPA Instant rails, ACI is helping Rabobank seamlessly transition iDEAL into a true real-time environment while ensuring consistent performance, security and regulatory compliance as volumes accelerate.
🇨🇦 SumUp launches in Canada, bringing simple, transparent payment solutions to its 38th market. As part of the launch, SumUp is introducing two core products to the Canadian market: the SumUp Go card reader and Payment Links, enabling merchants to accept remote and online payments with ease.
🇬🇧 Visa scales Click to Pay for Revolut cardholders, bringing frictionless checkout to millions and signalling a new default for online payments. Revolut has introduced Click to Pay for its 13 million+ customers in the UK and 40 million+ across Europe to use at checkout, alongside a coordinated rollout across Europe and key international markets.
🇨🇳 Alipay unveils AI agent upgrade, Ah Bao. Users can access over 10,000 everyday services, from hailing rides to ordering food and booking home appliance repairs, through natural conversations after switching to the AI agent version of Alipay with a simple swipe to the right on its homepage.
🇺🇸 Adyen announces Adyen Agentic as the universal translator for the next era of commerce. The solution includes Agentic Feed, Agentic Cart, and Agentic Payments, enabling businesses to connect product catalogs, checkout systems, and payment infrastructure to conversational AI platforms through a single integration.
🇬🇧 PawaPay hits three billion transactions, doubling daily payment volumes. The company said it has reached its third billion transactions in less than nine months, three months faster than it took to process the previous billion. Read more
DIGITAL BANKING NEWS
🇲🇳 Kakao Bank eyes a bigger role in Mongolia's digital banking push. The talks build on a recent partnership that includes a strategic investment in M Bank, the development of alternative credit-scoring models, and plans to expand digital financial services in Mongolia and Central Asia.
🌍 JPMorgan plans to expand Chase into Europe’s largest markets. France, Spain, and Italy are among the markets under consideration as the bank looks to grow its retail banking presence across Europe and compete with digital challengers through its brand, balance sheet, and digital-first offering.
🇬🇧 Starling Business set up Tap to Pay on iPhone. Tap to Pay allows Starling Bank business and sole trader customers to accept contactless payments directly on their smartphone, eliminating the need for an external card reader. Keep reading
PARTNERSHIPS
🇬🇭 GCB Bank and VISA expand collaboration to deliver smarter, customer-centric payment solutions in Ghana. The discussions explored new ways to improve convenience, value, and personalisation as customer expectations continue to evolve.
🌍 Revolut and Uber launch a loyalty partnership across the UK and Europe. The arrangement gives Revolut customers a tenfold boost to the RevPoints they earn on Uber rides, as well as on Lime bike and scooter bookings made within the Uber app, provided the customer has opted in to Revolut's RevPoints programme and pays with a Revolut card.
🇺🇸 Stripe and AWS enable AI agent payments for content owners and publishers. The system uses HTTP 402 Payment Required responses and supports machine-to-machine payments, helping content owners monetise growing AI-driven traffic without custom integrations.
🇸🇨 Bitget expands stablecoin payments for global merchants through Paydify partnership. The collaboration enables merchants connected to Paydify to access Bitget’s global user base through a single payment integration, simplifying how businesses accept stablecoin payments across the growing Web3 ecosystem.
🇺🇸 Zip US expands its partnership with Stripe to bring flexible payments to agentic commerce through shared payment tokens. The integration allows AI agents to complete purchases on behalf of consumers while keeping payment credentials secure and expanding access to alternative payment methods beyond traditional card-on-file transactions.
🇫🇷 Amundi, CACEIS and Ant International collaborate to advance blockchain-powered treasury and tokenisation. The initiative enables real-time treasury and liquidity management using blockchain technology, with Ant International serving as the first client to use the tokenised investment solution for its intra-group treasury operations.
🇺🇸 DCodex officially launches DPay. DPay is a Visa Business System-powered USDT commercial debit card that allows users to spend cryptocurrency directly at any Visa-accepting merchant worldwide, without manual conversion. Read on
DONEDEAL FUNDING NEWS
🌍 Founders of 3S Money, Ivan Zhiznevsky and Eugene Dugaev, invest in Botswana VASP Express Minds to expand stablecoin payments in Southern Africa. The investment aims to improve access to USD liquidity, enable faster cross-border settlements, and reduce reliance on traditional correspondent banking networks.
🇦🇪 Sovra raises $2M+ Pre-Seed to build the FinTech platform that gives people direct control of their money. The pre-seed round will fund engineering and product expansion as the company prepares for its public launch and continues building a platform.
🇺🇸 SyntheticFi raises $13M and exceeds $2B in regulatory AUM. Since its founding in 2023, the company has raised over $13 million and is expanding access to portfolio-backed financing strategies, helping RIAs offer liquidity and financing solutions without requiring clients to sell investment assets.
🇳🇬 Ripple participates in Flutterwave’s Series E with a strategic investment to accelerate African stablecoin payments. With this capital and a deepened product alliance, Flutterwave will accelerate its goal to bridge traditional financial systems with next-generation digital asset infrastructure.
🌍 Klarna backer Creandum puts $10M on ex-unicorn founders to fix the one B2B payments problem software never solved. The fresh investment will help Causa Prima grow its engineering and product teams in Madrid and Munich. Its goal is to eliminate payment terms.
🇫🇷 Aiffin raises €3.1 million to build AI-powered vehicle leasing for France’s overlooked entrepreneurs. The newly raised capital will be used to strengthen Aiffin’s AI underwriting capabilities, expand embedded-finance partnerships, and accelerate the growth of its financing portfolio across France.
🇺🇸 FinTech startup Receipts Depositary Corp. lands $7M from LiveOak Ventures, OTC Markets. The funding will support RDC's next phase of growth, including the launch of new DR products, expansion of distribution capabilities, continued investment in capital markets infrastructure, and strategic hiring across the organisation.
M&A
🇨🇦 FinTech Chimoney is to be acquired four weeks after announcing its shutdown. Founder Uchi Uchibeke said the deal would repay investors in full, provide proceeds to employees, and preserve the company’s payments infrastructure, pending regulatory approvals under Canada’s payment regulations.
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
🇦🇺 AUDC has strengthened its leadership team with the appointments of Andrew Kitchen and José Barroso. The hires come as demand grows for regulated digital payment infrastructure and follow the launch of the company’s New Zealand dollar stablecoin, NZDSC, alongside continued expansion of its AUDD stablecoin ecosystem.
🇬🇧 Former Microsoft chief Dame Clare Barclay joins British FinTech unicorn Zilch. The move comes as Zilch expands across Europe following its acquisition of Fjord Bank, pursues further acquisitions, and prepares for a potential future public listing.
🇺🇸 Swift names Michael Manos as Chief Information Officer. At Swift, Manos will ensure the company's network and cloud infrastructure remain secure and operationally ready to support its large-scale services and systems. Continue reading
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