Payments technology company, Flutterwave, has secured a microfinance bank license from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to operate full banking services in the country.
According to a statement, this license enables the company to hold funds and deposits directly, strengthening its financial infrastructure across its largest market and enabling more efficient financial services and settlement flows for consumers, businesses and enterprises.
The microfinance banking license acquisition follows Flutterwave’s purchase of Nigerian open-banking startup Mono in January 2026. The integration of Mono’s data-scraping and payment-initiation APIs was the precursor to this broader banking strategy, allowing Flutterwave to evolve into a vertically integrated financial “super-stack.”
Previously, global payment companies like Flutterwave operated via a sponsorship model, partnering with established commercial banks to access national clearing and settlement systems.
According to the statement, such an arrangement often limits a fintech’s pace of innovation and requires it to share a portion of the transaction value with the sponsoring institution.
By securing this banking license, Flutterwave gains greater control over how funds move within its ecosystem, including the ability to hold deposits and manage financial flows across its platform.
The company said it will continue to work closely with banking partners across the broader financial ecosystem.
The license also enables the company to internalise key elements of its financial value chain, improving operational efficiency and supporting faster product development.
This shift strengthens operational autonomy and allows Flutterwave to capture more value from the transactions processed within its ecosystem.
By operating more directly within the regulated financial system, Flutterwave can further optimise how money moves across its platform and improve settlement efficiency across its network of merchants, businesses and consumers.
“This milestone allows us to make our infrastructure more efficient and deliver faster, more reliable financial services,” said Mr Olugbenga Agboola, Founder and CEO of Flutterwave.
“By operating directly within the financial system, we can streamline money movement, accelerate settlement for merchants, and build products that support sustainable long-term growth,” he added.
Flutterwave also said that with this license, it is bringing the same infrastructure that has historically made it into a unicorn into a new generation of banking built for consumer financial services within the SendApp ecosystem, utilising business financial tools for businesses of every size, as well as managing complex financial operations, treasury, and liquidity.
Also, it will embed financial services for marketplaces and platform operators, while developers will benefit from financial infrastructure enabling the creation of financial products through APIs.