When Flutterwave launched in 2016, the fintech company quickly became the poster child for African startup success stories. In 2021, it achieved unicorn status, reaching a valuation of more than $1 billion, and in 2022, after raising $250 million, it secured a $3 billion valuation.

CEO Olugbenga “GB” Agboola was celebrated for his leadership and lauded as a trailblazer in African fintech, providing digital payment services for businesses across the continent.

Then later that year, came a flurry of damaging allegations of workplace bullying and accusations of money laundering in Kenya, which sent shockwaves through the industry. At the time, Flutterwave denied financial impropriety, said it had tried to solve a harassment claim amicably, and had a zero-tolerance stance on bullying — but the company’s reputation took a hit.

However, Agboola says Flutterwave has weathered the storm and emerged stronger than ever.

In November 2023, Kenyan authorities cleared the company of all money laundering allegations. Additionally, a former employee who sued the company for reputational damage and emotional distress lost her appeal seeking $900k although the initial $2,500 previously awarded by a Kenyan court was upheld.

“Trust is the business we’re in,” Agboola said. “We’ve been working tirelessly to regain that trust.”

“We have worked on our corporate governance, infrastructure, compliance system and that’s what we are going to keep doing as a company and part of that is why we brought Mitesh in,” he added.

In September, Flutterwave announced it had appointed Mitesh Popat, a former Citibank executive with a wealth of experience working on the continent, as its chief financial officer.

Local media has reported that Flutterwave has also had to deal with security incidents. The company said in a statement that it is “committed to doing our part to ensure the security of the financial system in Africa,” giving the example of its partnership with Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crime Commission, and adding that it has “invested heavily in ensuring the highest level of security across all our products and have a team of world-class talents across finance, risk, legal, and compliance and certifications.”

Bawo Egbakhumeh, a senior compliance and anti-money laundering specialist not connected with Flutterwave, is well-versed in governance and operational challenges faced by growing companies.

But she added that in recent years, “Flutterwave seems to have responded by tightening its governance, improved compliance programs with more focus on accountability and transparency.

“Global partnerships and investor pressure likely pushed the company to make necessary reforms and adherence to improved governance standards,” she said.

A unified Africa

Agboola says that in the last year, the company has secured new payment licenses in Ghana, Zambia, Uganda and Rwanda, and more than 20 in the United States through a major partner bank, facilitating cross-border transactions from the US to Africa.

While the company has previously talked about plans to IPO, Agboola says the company is “focused right now on expansion and deepening the company’s market penetration in enterprise payments.”

“IPO is one of many growth opportunities on the table, and we continue to put processes in place to be well-prepared for that next phase of our growth,” he added.

Beyond the focus on governance and structure, Agboola envisions a future where Africa’s diverse payment systems are seamlessly integrated into a unified marketplace. “Africa today is not a country, but we want to make it feel like one,” he said.

Agboola highlighted the challenges of navigating the continent’s fragmented payment systems, like M-Pesa in Kenya and bank transfers in Nigeria, which complicate cross-border transactions.

“A money transfer from Nigeria to Ghana could take up to three days,” Agboola explained. “Our mission is to ensure that businesses and consumers can transact across borders as effortlessly as they do within them.”

Based in San Francisco but still heavily focused on the African market, recently, the company partnered with MainStreet Bank, unlocking access to 49 US states and allowing seamless cross-border transactions for African businesses through its Send App, Agboola said.

He added that this collaboration, coupled with the integration of American Express into Flutterwave’s payment network, represents a significant win for African businesses, enabling them to reach millions of new customers globally.

“These partnerships are game-changers,” Agboola noted. “With MainStreet Bank, we’re not just connecting Africa with the US; we’re facilitating faster, more reliable payments for merchants and consumers across both continents.”

Beyond partnerships, Flutterwave is also investing heavily in new technologies like AI to enhance its payment infrastructure.

“We are committed to staying ahead of the curve by leveraging AI to improve our compliance, monitoring and risk management,” Agboola said.

The Israeli military confirmed on Thursday that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, believed by Israel to be chief architect of the militant group’s deadly October 7, 2023, terror attack that set off the war in Gaza, had been killed in battle.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that Sinwar was killed on Wednesday after a “year-long pursuit.”

“In recent weeks, IDF and ISA forces, under the command of the Southern Command, have been operating in the southern Gaza Strip, following IDF and ISA intelligence that indicated the suspected locations of senior members of Hamas,” the Israeli military statement read.

“IDF soldiers of the 828th Brigade (Bislach) operating in the area identified and eliminated three terrorists. After completing the process of identifying the body, it can be confirmed that Yahya Sinwar was eliminated.”

The sources said that Israeli infantry troops encountered three militants near a building in Gaza and engaged them. After the battle ended, troops found a body resembling Sinwar and alerted senior commanders.

Israel had also confirmed to US officials that Sinwar was dead according to initial DNA testing, another person familiar with the matter said.

Dental records helped Israel identify Sinwar, a US official and former official familiar with the matter said, in addition to other biometrics. The dental confirmation was able to be conducted relatively quickly, the official said. The Israeli government has Sinwar’s biometrics because he spent more than two decades in Israeli imprisonment for murder.

According to Israeli Army Radio, which is state funded and operated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the Israeli military detected “suspicious movement” on the upper floor of a building, so fired at it with a tank. Later, the radio station said, a drone scanned the area of the attack, and soldiers recognized the face of Sinwar in the rubble.

The IDF had previously detected “unusual activity” in the area, the radio station reported, so decided last week to “increase scans and not to leave.”

Hamas has yet to make any comment on its leader.

Sinwar was long Israel’s most wanted man in the strip, but he remained elusive.

Sinwar was the top target of Israel’s operation in Gaza, launched in the wake of the October 7 attack, in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage. Israel has killed several senior Hamas figures in its air and ground campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 42,000 people and triggered a humanitarian crisis, according to authorities in the strip.

Pictures purported to show the dead body of Sinwar are circulating widely on social media. In them, a man strongly resembling Sinwar can be seen lying dead in the rubble of a destroyed building with serious injuries to the skull.

Sinwar led Hamas since August, following the assassination of previous leader Ismail Haniyeh.

He had not been seen in public since the Hamas attacks and is thought to have been hiding in the vast network of tunnels worming their way under Gaza.

Israel has publicly accused Sinwar of being the “mastermind” behind Hamas’ terror attack against Israel on October 7 – though experts say he is likely one of several. Mohammed Deif, the commander of the Al-Qassam brigades who Israel claimed to have killed in a strike in July, and his deputy, Marwan Issa, have also been named as key figures behind October 7.

A longtime figure in the Islamist Palestinian group, Sinwar was responsible for building up Hamas’ military wing before forging important new ties with regional Arab powers as the group’s civilian and political leader.

He was elected to Hamas’ main decision-making body, the Politburo, in 2017 as the political leader of Hamas in Gaza branch.

Sinwar has been designated a global terrorist by the US Department of State since 2015, and has been recently sanctioned by the United Kingdom and France.

US officials have speculated that his death could be one of the best chances of bringing the Israel-Hamas war to an end. With a ceasefire and hostages deal to pause the war stubbornly stuck for months, senior Biden administration officials had hung onto hope that Sinwar might one day be taken out – and that that could open up doors that simply would not be otherwise.

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, believed to be one of the architects of the militant group’s October 7, 2023, terror attack and Israel’s most wanted man, was killed in Gaza on Wednesday, according to the Israeli military.

Sinwar was one of the key targets of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, and Israeli officials branded him with many names, including the “face of evil” and “the butcher from Khan Younis.” Formerly a very public figure, Sinwar had not been seen since the October 2023 attacks, likely surviving the last year of Israel’s siege of Gaza by bunkering down in a vast network of underground tunnels.

In August, Sinwar became one of Hamas’ most senior leaders after his predecessor Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in the Iranian capital Tehran.

But he had long been a key player in the militant group. Sinwar joined Hamas in the late 1980s, rising quickly through its ranks. He founded Hamas’ feared international intelligence security branch, the Majd, and was known for employing brutal violence against anyone suspected of collaborating with the Israelis. He was also viewed as a pragmatic political leader by some: In 2017, Hamas elected Sinwar as the political chief of its main decision-making body, the Politburo, in Gaza.

Sinwar was born in a refugee camp in 1962 in Khan Younis, southern Gaza. His family was displaced from the Palestinian village of Al-Majdal – now the Israeli city Ashkelon – during the Arab-Israeli war.

Sinwar enrolled in the Islamic University in Gaza in the early 1980s, where he studied Arabic, was involved in Palestinian nationalist student organizations and was detained for his participation in anti-occupation activism. In 1985, before Hamas was formed, he helped organize the Majd, a network of Islamist youths that exposed Palestinian informants working with Israel. Later, that group would be folded into Hamas’ security apparatus of the same name.

Sinwar was imprisoned in Israel on four life sentences in 1988, accused of orchestrating the murder of two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel.

During his incarceration, Sinwar was said to have abused and manipulated fellow prisoners, punishing those thought to be informants and bullying others to undertake hunger strikes.

Sinwar said he spent his years in prison studying his enemy, including learning how to read and speak Hebrew through the Open University.

In 2011, he was released as part of a prisoner swap that saw more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners exchanged for Gilad Shalit, an IDF soldier who had been held in Gaza for five years.

At that time, Sinwar called the exchange “one of the big strategic monuments in the history of our cause.” Sinwar’s release has been attributed to the fact that his brother was one of Shalit’s kidnappers, who insisted on Sinwar being included in the deal.

After being freed, he returned to Gaza where he began his rise in the militant organization, becoming notorious for the violent treatment he would dole out on suspected collaborators.

While some viewed Sinwar as a hardline militant, others saw him as a master strategist.

Fifteen years into his prison sentence, he used his Hebrew skills to urge the Israeli public to support a truce with Hamas in an interview with an Israeli broadcaster. “We will not recognize Israel, but we are ready to do a long-term truce with Israel that will bring calm and prosperity to the region,” he said.

And in a rare interview with an Italian journalist in 2018, Sinwar indicated that the group was willing to find a political solution, saying: “A new war is in no one’s interest.”

He also alluded to the reality he and others in Gaza were facing under Israel’s blockade, drawing from his own experience in Israeli jail. “I never came out – I have only changed prisons,” he said of life in Gaza.

In 2018, under Sinwar’s leadership, Hamas launched its “March of Return” campaign, which saw Gazans protest weekly near the Israeli border, calling for Israel to lift their blockade and to allow Palestinians the right to return to their ancestral villages and towns. The demonstrations drew international attention and support of human rights groups. At one of the protests, Sinwar applauded those facing “the enemy who besieges us.”

As the group’s political leader, Sinwar focused on the group’s foreign relationships, forging important ties with regional Arab powers.

He was responsible for restoring Hamas’ relationship with Egyptian leaders who were wary of the group’s support for political Islam, and for pulling in continued military funding from Iran, according to research by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

Israel has publicly accused Sinwar of being the “mastermind” behind Hamas’ terror attack against Israel on October 7 – though experts say he is likely one of several – making him one of the key targets of its war in Gaza.

The attack was the deadliest assault in Israel’s history. Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and also took some 250 people hostage into Gaza.

Sinwar was considered a vital decisionmaker and likely the main point of contact within Gaza during the intense negotiations over the return of the hostages taken into the enclave by Hamas in the October 7 attacks. The talks involved senior figures from Israel, Hamas, the United States, Qatar and Egypt.

Throughout the war, Sinwar consolidated the leadership of Hamas and became by far its most important figure. His influence grew even more following the killing of other senior Hamas officials, including Mohammed al-Masri, popularly known as Mohammed Deif, the commander of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of Hamas, and Deif’s deputy, Marwan Issa.

In 2015, Sinwar was designated a global terrorist by the US Department of State and the European Union. In recent years, he has been sanctioned by the United Kingdom and France.