Emma Elekwa
A leading payments technology company, Flutterwave has announced plans for massive impact programme with the goal to empower the Anambra business community with technology, financing and other supports.
Chief Executive Officer of Flutterwave, Olugbenga Agboola disclosed this on Thursday, during a meeting with members of the Anambra Tech Community, hosted by Chairman, Stanel Group, Dr Stanley Uzochukwu, at the Stanel Dome, Awka.
Flutterwave had earlier in April, secured a Nigerian Micro Finance Banking license from the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, which enables it to hold funds and deposits directly.
Addressing hub owners, start-up founders, and senior developers from Anambra during the meeting, the Flutterwave CEO, Agboola explained that the visit was aimed at creating hundreds of millionaires in the state.
“We’re here to entrench the Flutterwave platform in the Anambra ecosystem, to ensure that whenever the people think of payment, as well as other financial services and settlement flows, they think Flutterwave.
“Flutterwave as the biggest payment system out of Africa, born in Nigeria, has through its infrastructure, powered so many companies across Nigeria.”
He added that its payment solutions over the past 10 years has shown that it is possible to build a Nigerian system that works efficiently for Nigerians.
Empowering millions of businesses
“The company had in its 10 years of existence, empowered millions of businesses across Africa through its platform, as part of its efforts aimed at giving back to the society.
“Our goal is to entrench our system in the Anambra ecosystem. We want you to think of any kind of payment and other financial services in Anambra and you think Flutterwave.
“We want the Anambra market to be intentional about using flutterwave. That’s why we want to build a proper community in Anambra,” he said.
The Flutterwave boss further revealed the company’s plans to embark a lot of programmes to empower youths in skills, giving access to Application Programming Interfaces, APIs for receiving payment, and access to safe funding for start-ups.
He said, “Why should Anambra and Nigerian entrepreneurs look abroad for funding when they have big guys who can invest in the business?
“We want Anambra to be our hub for the entire east of Nigeria. We want to put our system, infrastructure and offices here and have our Point of Sales, PoS for every small business and large firm in the state.
“We are committed to doing a lot here and very soon, we will organize an impact program for entrepreneurs in Anambra and the goal is to create more people here who can create global platforms all the way from Anambra.”
Recently secured banking license
Agboola explained the impact the new banking license secured by Flutterwave can do to its operations.
“We have built tech that has gone global and with our platform and the banking license that we secured recently, we can make it bigger for the new entrepreneurs from Anambra and the entire Nigeria to even grow faster and bigger via our platform.
“For the past 10 years, we have been a company through which money passes and doesn’t stay. Now, we want to give our customers the ability to hold money by themselves on flutterwave.
“That means that SMEs can now access lending, use our PoS anywhere in Nigeria, pay anywhere in the world, while customers can now have your own account number and system.
“It is a simple way to bring more values to consumers and SMEs in Anambra state.
“We are planning in partnership with Stanel World to build a very massive impact programme with the goal impact the community in the state with technology, financing, lending and everything we have to create more millionnaires in the state.”
Experience with Flutterwave
The Chairman, Stanel World, Dr Uzochukwu acknowledged that the Flutterwave platform had proven to be efficient for payment services within and beyond Nigeria, sharing his experience with a transaction done on the platform.
“Sometime ago, I wanted to do a payment of a huge sum to the US and UK and we spent almost two weeks in doing the paperwork, yet we were unable to effect the payment.
“When I met the Flutterwave CEO, it didn’t take up-to 10 seconds and the transaction was effected using the Flutterwave platform. So, I encourage our people to buy into the platform,” he advised.
In his remarks, Chukwuka Zikora, a co-founder, Anambra Tech Community noted that builders in the state tech ecosystem were leveraging the benefits of Flutterwave platform already.
He however said the visit reinforces their belief that the system represents a reliable payment and banking solution for their businesses.
“We are embracing the paFlutterwave, Stannel partner to raise millionaires in Anambrayment solution that the Flutterwave is bringing. We are ready to partner Flutterwave.
“We are excited at your visit because it shows that the brand values the Anambra ecosystem,” he said.
