Powering Africa's payments

At the centre of this behemoth is Lucia Okafor FCCA, Flutterwave’s London-based global head of operations. Born and raised in Northern Nigeria and a graduate of the University of Ibadan and Imperial College London, Lucia has been steeped in the African payments industry since the early days of her career. With an impressive track record in payments strategy and digital banking as a consultant with not just one Big Four firm but two – Deloitte and PwC – she joined Flutterwave early in 2025 after ‘cheering it on from the sidelines’ for years.

‘I’ve had a long relationship with the company,’ she says. ‘I first encountered it when it was less than a year old – I met with its CEO and founder Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola and really believed in him and the company he was building. Then, late last year when I was thinking of moving out of consulting, I reached out to him. He came back to me within 10 minutes and said, I think you can help me.’

With its African headquarters located in Lagos, Lucia initially joined Flutterwave to lead an operations transformation project designed to address a common challenge for successful fintechs – growth that is so rapid that it outpaces the operations model. With her African roots and global exposure, Lucia was a good fit.

‘The CEO felt that the company was not fully equipped to support the growth that was coming at it,’ she says. ‘I was asked to identify ways in which we could ramp up quickly, making use of AI and automation to fully digitalise processes.’

Intense competition

The payments sector remains the most valuable element of financial services, generating US$2.5 trillion in annual revenue worldwide. But the intensive growth that took off during the pandemic has begun to slow as competition and the pressure on fees has intensified and yields decreased.

According to McKinsey’s 2025 Global Payments Report, global payments revenue growth, which has increased by an average of 7% annually since 2019, reached 12% in 2023, before slowing to 4% in 2024.

Africa has consistently led both innovation and growth in payments, thanks to an influx of investment, friendly regulation, a young and tech-savvy population, and its ability to forge ahead unhindered by legacy infrastructure. But these advantages have also created intense competition.

‘Africa had a unique opportunity,’ says Lucia. ‘We were able to go mobile first and leapfrog most of the world. Nigeria has had instant payments for over 10 years, but because of that, there’s a lot of pressure to innovate. There are a lot of fintechs out there doing really good work.’

So what makes Flutterwave so successful? The company builds and powers payment infrastructure and tools for global and African businesses – including Uber, music streaming platform Audiomack, online investment platform Bamboo and Nigerian airline Air Peace – helping them to provide seamless and secure payments for their customers. This includes APIs (application programming interfaces) and software development kits, solutions for online stores, and connections to global payment systems like PayPal.

Alongside this, the retail arm leverages the core payment infrastructure to allow individuals to send money between African countries and the diaspora.

Bespoke solutions

The true basis for Flutterwave’s success, says Lucia, is its value proposition: ‘We may not be the cheapest – in fact, I don’t want us to be the cheapest. I want customers to stick with us because of what we offer.’ That means sitting down with customers and designing payments solutions that exactly meet their needs. ‘They come to us with their problems and we create bespoke solutions for them. That’s unique.’

Her role, she adds, is to make sure that all this work and potential translate into revenue. ‘Strategically, we are very clear about where we are going, but I need to make sure that our business model supports that ambition and that we can operationalise opportunities.’ Her ACCA qualification, she adds, means she can act as the ‘bridge’ between operations and finance.

One priority is to simplify payments within the African continent. ‘A lot of the time, moving money across Africa is chaos. If I send money from Nigeria to Mozambique, it will most likely leave Africa and then come back into it, because of the correspondent banking system.’

With the business riding on the infrastructure of banks and other payment providers, Flutterwave has put in place measures to mitigate impacts from changes in local operating environments that might inhibit continuous and reliable transaction processing.

‘We build capacity and processing redundancies in every country we operate in so that we are not affected by regulatory developments or disruptions that might affect the banks there. I have to ensure that these redundancies work well so that we are not dependent on any one business or infrastructure.’

With competition so intense, the push to innovate is constant, particularly around alternatives to fiat currencies. ‘Stable coins, the blockchain infrastructure, there’s a lot of pressure,’ she says. ‘But that also means that payments will always be important. Some industries will be diminished by technology, but the significance of payments is only increased by tech. It will continue to evolve.’

IPO-ready?

And then, always in the background, there is the IPO. Plans were first announced in April 2024, but since then the company has held back, saying the time and the business need to be right. ‘It’s my job to make sure we are ready, and there is a lot we need to do,’ says Lucia.

‘People often think that listing is the ultimate goal, the endgame. But it’s not like that for us. It’s something we would love to have, but there’s a lot more we want to do besides. The IPO would be the icing on the cake.’