Flutterwave partners Ripple for RLUSD integration, targets $3.2B valuation to boost Africa cross-border payments
Flutterwave announced a strategic investment from Ripple as part of its Series E funding round, which values the company at $3.2 billion. The partnership focuses on integrating Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin into Flutterwave's payment infrastructure, leveraging the XRP Ledger for faster transaction clearing and deploying a unified API to connect Flutterwave's domestic network with Ripple Payments' global system.
By merging traditional fiat methods (local cards, mobile wallets, bank transfers) with Ripple's blockchain technology, the integration eliminates historical pain points of African cross-border payments - multi-day delays and inflated FX margins. Businesses will now experience guaranteed liquidity, predictable pricing, and real-time settlement. This positions Nigeria as the primary hub for global digital asset trade while driving economic resilience across Africa, building on Flutterwave's existing scale of over $500m raised and 1 billion transactions worth $50bn processed.
Olugbenga "GB" Agboola, Flutterwave's CEO, states the partnership creates a "payment superhighway" connecting African commerce directly to the global economy, catalyzing Nigerian and African sovereignty in digital finance. Reece Merrick of Ripple adds the investment will establish RLUSD within Flutterwave's infrastructure, opening faster, lower-cost financial services at scale. For Nigerian businesses engaged in cross-border trade, will you evaluate how this new stablecoin-enabled payment architecture could reduce your transaction costs and settlement times when dealing with international suppliers or customers?