Renowned economist John Maynard Keynes once said, “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.” This resonates strongly in today’s world of real-economy finance. For decades, these industries have relied on established infrastructures designed for a different era – systems that struggle to keep pace with the accelerating demands of emerging technology, faster money flows, and changing regulation.
The result is a complex web of digital islands, inefficiency, and barriers that slow the flow of capital and constrain economic growth. Particularly in economies that need it most. However, within this complexity lies opportunity. Innovators are stepping forward to address these barriers, reimagine transaction banking, and make payments better.
In this new series, “Voices from the frontier founders” on TTP, we profile some of the leaders and founders who are rebuilding liquidity and risk management.
TTP editor in chief, Deepesh Patel, caught up with Olugbenga Agboola, CEO of Flutterwave, whose efforts showcase the drive to turn fragmentation into connectivity, unlocking new opportunities for African businesses and beyond.
Deepesh Patel: Flutterwave’s mission is to help Africa’s markets “operate as one.” Practically, what are the biggest structural barriers — FX regimes, fractured banking, regulation — still standing between today’s reality and that vision?
Olugbenga Agboola: The biggest barrier is still fragmentation. An African business crossing a border suddenly has to navigate a different currency, a different payment system, different banking relationships, and a different regulatory framework. What should be a straightforward commercial transaction becomes a complex treasury and compliance exercise.
FX is particularly important, and not just because of volatility. The deeper problem is convertibility. Businesses should not have to route an African-to-African payment through a hard currency simply because the two domestic systems cannot talk to each other. Initiatives like PAPSS matter because they are starting to build the infrastructure for local-currency settlement across African markets.
Regulation is the other side of that equation. We do not need every country to have identical rules. But greater interoperability and mutual recognition would materially reduce the cost of expanding across Africa. Our approach has been to build a common infrastructure layer that accommodates local requirements – so the complexity sits with us, not with the business trying to trade.
That is also why we have been going deeper into the infrastructure itself. Our Nigerian Microfinance Banking licence gives us greater control over deposits and settlement in our largest market. Mono adds open-banking capabilities around financial data, identity, and account-to-account payments. The objective is to connect payments, banking, data, and identity — so businesses can focus on trading, not on navigating infrastructure.
Deepesh Patel: The retreat of correspondent banking has hit African trade corridors hard. How is Flutterwave’s infrastructure changing what’s actually possible for businesses moving money across the continent, and in and out of it?
Olugbenga Agboola: Correspondent banking has historically meant moving value through chains of institutions before a payment reaches its destination. As international banks have reduced their trade lines to African institutions, that model has become even harder for businesses that need predictable cross-border settlement.
What Flutterwave has done is aggregate the complexity. We have infrastructure across 34 African markets and connect businesses to local cards, bank transfers, mobile wallets, and other payment methods through one platform. A business expanding across multiple African markets should not need to build a separate payments architecture in every jurisdiction.
We are now building alternative settlement routes alongside conventional banking rails. The Ripple partnership integrates RLUSD, the XRP Ledger, and Ripple Payments into our infrastructure, creating another option for moving value between local payment networks and global settlement systems, particularly where traditional cross-border settlement is slow or liquidity-constrained.
I do not see this as fintech replacing banks. The opportunity is to orchestrate banks, domestic payment systems, open banking, and new settlement technologies more effectively. Businesses ultimately care about whether the payment arrives securely, at a predictable cost, within a useful timeframe, not which rail did the work underneath.
Deepesh Patel: With Ripple now an investor and stablecoin capabilities in build, where do you see digital assets genuinely solving trade and settlement problems in Africa — and where does the hype outpace reality?
Olugbenga Agboola: Stablecoins are most interesting to us when they solve a real commercial problem. If a merchant is waiting days for settlement, or a business cannot access liquidity outside banking hours, or an exporter is repeatedly converting through intermediary currencies, a regulated dollar-denominated settlement asset has real utility. This is infrastructure, not speculation.
Ripple is a practical example. The integration brings RLUSD into Flutterwave’s payment rails and Send App corridors, uses the XRP Ledger for transaction clearing, and connects us with Ripple Payments. For businesses, the objective is faster settlement, more predictable liquidity, and another way to move value across borders.
We are deliberately multi-rail. Ripple is one component of a broader strategy; our work with Tempo is another example. Not every transaction needs to move on a blockchain, just as not every transaction needs to move over a card network. The right rail depends on the customer, the market, the regulation, the liquidity, and the use case.
Where the hype gets ahead of reality is when stablecoins are presented as eliminating the underlying requirements of finance. They do not remove AML and KYC obligations, currency regulation, or the need for dependable fiat on-and off-ramps. A faster token does not solve those problems. Our view is simple: the winners will make the technology invisible to the customer and compete on reliability, cost, and trust.
Deepesh Patel: For treasurers and CFOs running operations across multiple African currencies, what does good liquidity and FX management look like today, and where does Flutterwave fit?
Olugbenga Agboola: Good treasury management across Africa starts with visibility and control – knowing where your cash is, what currency it is in, what obligations are coming due, and how quickly you can move liquidity to where the business needs it. Fragmented providers make that significantly harder because collections, FX, payouts, and settlement sit in different systems.
Our direction is to give businesses a more unified financial layer. Flutterwave already handles local and cross-border collections and payouts. Our Nigerian banking licence allows us to hold deposits and manage financial flows more directly in that market. The Mono acquisition strengthens account-based payments, data connectivity, and identity. Together, those create the foundations for deeper treasury and liquidity tools — rather than treating each payment as an isolated transaction.
Stablecoins can become another instrument within that architecture. In the right corridors, 24/7 settlement and access to dollar-denominated value can reduce the working capital tied up while businesses wait for traditional cross-border settlement. The point is not for the CFO to become a digital-asset trader. The point is to give the treasury team another regulated settlement option when it produces a better commercial outcome.
Our job is not to make African FX volatility disappear. It is to give businesses better visibility, more options, and greater control over how and when they move liquidity. For a CFO, that translates into better working capital management and less operational friction.
Deepesh Patel: You’ve been a vocal advocate for intra-African trade and the AfCFTA. What has to happen — in policy, infrastructure and finance — for that trade to genuinely scale this decade?
Olugbenga Agboola: Three things have to happen. First, the financial infrastructure has to catch up with the ambition of AfCFTA. It should not be easier for an African business to pay a supplier in Europe than a supplier in the next country. PAPSS is the right direction — its February 2026 integration with Kenya’s Pesalink linked more than 80 participants with over 160 PAPSS banks, enabling 24/7 cross-border transfers in local currencies. That is what progress looks like.
Second, regulation needs greater interoperability. Not one rulebook for the continent — but more mutual recognition and common standards that allow a well-regulated institution to expand without rebuilding its entire compliance infrastructure from scratch. That reduces cost while maintaining the standards regulators rightly expect.
Third, payments cannot solve trade without finance. Afreximbank‘s 2025 African Trade Report estimated Africa’s trade finance gap at around $100 billion. If an SME can receive a cross-border payment but cannot finance inventory, hedge an exposure, or access working capital to fulfil the order, we have solved only part of the problem. Financial institutions, DFIs, and technology companies need to connect trade finance more directly to transaction infrastructure.
AfCFTA becomes economically meaningful when the movement of money starts to match the intended movement of goods, services, and people. That is what we are building toward.
