On a good day, paying an African business should feel as easy as sending an email. In practice, it rarely does.
A merchant in Lagos selling to a customer in Nairobi. A startup in Accra charging cards from London. An enterprise in Johannesburg settling across multiple currencies. The promise of digital trade is there, but it often breaks down into familiar friction: incompatible payment methods, uneven regulations, slow settlements and failed transfers.
That problem is where Olugbenga “GB” Agboola has spent most of his career.
As co‑founder and Chief Executive Officer of Flutterwave, Agboola has helped build one of Africa’s most consequential pieces of financial infrastructure: payment rails that quietly move money across borders, currencies and systems. It is the kind of work most people only notice when it fails, and the kind that determines whether Africa’s digital economy can scale at all.
Agboola may not the loudest figure in African fintech. But his work sits at one of the sector’s hardest truths. Commerce cannot scale smoothly if money cannot move smoothly.
A Builder From the Systems Layer
Agboola’s professional trajectory points to someone comfortable operating deep in the systems layer. Before Flutterwave, he worked on fintech products at global firms including PayPal, gaining exposure to how payments infrastructure works at scale. Flutterwave was founded in 2016 by Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, Agboola and Adeleke Adekoya, with Aboyeji as the first CEO and Agboola initially serving as CTO. The idea itself was straightforward. The execution, however, was not.
Africa’s internet economy was growing rapidly, but cross‑border payments between businesses remained fragmented and expensive. Each new market required rebuilding integrations, renegotiating bank relationships and navigating different regulatory regimes. Flutterwave leaned into an infrastructure thesis: abstract that complexity away and let merchants focus on selling.
The CEO Seat Came With a Different Job
By 2018, Flutterwave had become one of the companies used to explain Africa’s fintech momentum. That same year, Agboola stepped into the CEO role.
His mandate was clear. Expansion beyond Nigeria and a sharper focus on fixing cross‑border payments across the continent. Flutterwave’s positioning evolved from a promising startup into a pan‑African infrastructure company.
That shift became impossible to ignore in February 2022, when Flutterwave raised $250 million in a Series D round, pushing its valuation above $3 billion. The round was a global signal that Africa’s infrastructure‑led fintechs could attract serious capital and scale rapidly. But in payments, the real test often begins after the valuation headline fades. Scale brings scrutiny, and infrastructure companies are judged as much on controls as on growth.
When Scale Brings Heat
Flutterwave soon entered a period of public scrutiny, marked by allegations, internal turmoil and cross‑border legal challenges. For a payments company, such moments are existential. Bank partnerships, regulator confidence and enterprise trust are all at stake.
This is the part of fintech building that rarely makes glossy pitch decks. Payments companies operate in regulated, high‑trust environments. When pressure mounts, systems and governance are tested in real time.
During this period, Flutterwave also worked to strengthen its regulatory footing at home, securing a Switching and Processing Licence from Nigeria’s central bank. Licences at this level are quiet symbolic. They shape how a company is classified, who it can partner with and how regulators view it as it evolves from startup into infrastructure.
The Bet He Is Still Making
Flutterwave’s story has included rapid growth, controversy and the kind of scrutiny that follows any payments platform once it becomes too important to ignore. Through it all, Agboola’s focus has remained consistent. He has chosen to stay in the hardest layer of fintech. The one where success is measured not only by visibility, but by whether money moves cleanly, securely and predictably every day.
It is not glamorous work. It sits at the intersection of regulators, banks, merchants and markets, each pulling on the same system. But it is the work that makes everything else possible.
As Africa’s digital trade expands, the founders who matter most will not be those who promise disruption alone. They will be the ones who can keep the rails steady through growth, scrutiny and change.
GB Agboola is still building for that standard.