Financial technology is becoming increasingly crucial to modern life. It’s what drives the movement of digital money, allowing consumers to buy goods remotely and greasing the wheels of contemporary commerce. But it also sits in a precarious position. 

Fintech companies like Flutterwave, Africa’s most valuable tech startup, must balance the needs of data security against the opportunity costs of growing larger and developing new services. And they must do it in a rapidly changing environment. 

“Our growth has been customer-defined,” Flutterwave CEO and founder Olugbenga “GB” Agboola said on “The Flip” podcast. “Our expansion is always customer-driven. Where does the customer want us to be? We listen to customers a lot in Flutterwave. We have an extreme customer obsession in Flutterwave when it comes to what our customer wants and how to deliver to the customer.”

What Does Fintech Do?

People often fall into one of two camps: the kind who never think about money, and the kind who always think about the bottom line. But even those who obsess over their bank balances don’t often consider what actually happens when they make a purchase or transfer money from one account to another.

Behind every swipe of a credit card, click of a “checkout now” button, and direct deposit, millions of micro-actions are taking place. Fintech is what communicates between banks, merchants, lending institutions, peer-to-peer transfer apps, and more. 

Financial technology began as a way to improve the efficiency of the pen-and-ink ledgers of days past. But it’s become much more than a digital balance sheet. Today, fintech powers automated investment technology, assists nonprofits with fundraising operations, revolutionizes how credit card companies do business, and has spurred new industries like microloans. 

In short, it’s how the modern economy does business and how it keeps score. 

Nearly every modern financial action, from mortgages to day care, is managed by financial technology. 

And the revolution has just begun. 

How Flutterwave Grew

As one of the fintech sector’s most exciting startups, Flutterwave has played a crucial role in the modern financial economy. The 8-year-old, Flutterwave serves enterprise clients like Microsoft and Uber, as well as individuals seeking to easily pay for goods and services, send money to friends and family, and cover out-of-country tuition costs. 

By serving both multinationals and everyday people, the company has become a service provider on both ends of the modern economy, giving it a unique perspective into how today’s business functions. 

Flutterwave is also unique in that it was comfortable using its understanding of the marketplace to dictate its growth, said Agboola. 

“We helped Uber to scale across Africa and we follow them into every market that they were going to go into. So, our expansion and growth story can be linked to our customer requirements, and it can also be linked to our philosophy about making payments simpler across Africa and simplifying payments for endless possibilities,” he said on “The Flip.”

“For us as a company, it’s really just about: How do we make sure our customers can scale on our platform? How do we make sure our customers can go to a new country in Africa and all they have to do is just flip a switch, literally, on our dashboard and they can just go live in their new market?” he added. “Our expansion is always customer-driven. Where does the customer want us to be?”

How Flutterwave Prepares for the Future of Fintech

The focus on service — not growth — is what ultimately allowed Flutterwave to prosper amid a sea of rival service providers. Through Agboola’s leadership and partnerships with influential market leaders like Uber, the company navigated its way from promising startup to a Series D fundraise that resulted in a valuation north of $3 billion. 

Companies don’t get to that level by being lucky. It takes a certain amount of skill at understanding the present and predicting how the currents of today will shape the waves of the future. 

For Flutterwave, the future of fintech will result in a more integrated, interconnected world. From the beginning, Agboola has claimed that his company’s goal was to connect the whole of Africa. Following that logic, it’s clear the future of fintech is complete market saturation, allowing every person across the globe access to the worldwide economy through their phones, laptops, or computers. 

But as they become ubiquitous, fintech platforms will change. Fintech could become more convenient for users, integrating directly into nonfinancial software. Social media users may be able to pay for products from content creators and advertisers directly through their favourite apps, and retail apps feature new services, such as buy now, pay later options at checkout.

There might also be a revolution in how traditional financial institutions, like banks and lenders, serve consumers. Digital payments and banking services could make all kinds of big-ticket purchases, like mortgages and car loans, simpler and faster for consumers.

The wealth of new data may lead to software that delivers personalized financial advice to consumers, allowing lenders or artificial intelligence to steer individuals toward smart investment strategies, better ways to save for education, and more.

All of these new ideas are exciting, but none more so than what Flutterwave continues to train its focus on: the democratization of modern finance. 

As developing countries move into the digital world, their economies will undergo a tectonic shift. By empowering a new segment of the market, Flutterwave will help create the next generation of marketplaces by helping to provide fintech services to entire niches that have been excluded from the modern economy for decades. 

Transforming small communities can have profound downstream effects that will ripple outward to the entire world economy, according to Agboola. 

“We are an enabler,” he said. “We may not go directly to help reduce poverty, but we are going to enable businesses that help to reduce poverty.”