Flutterwave, Africa’s leading payment company, is reportedly part of a consortium looking to acquire the British fintech company, Railsr.
Railsr, previously known as Railsbank, specialises in embedded finance solutions such as banking services, credit cards, and digital wallets and has caught the eyes of potential buyers, including rivals such as Flutterwave and part of its investors who seek to acquire the company.
Quoting an insider source, Sky News reported that “there was heavy competition for the asset” following the downturn that the Fintech industry experienced in 2022. A report by the Financial Times claimed that almost a trillion dollars had been lost from the valuation of FinTech companies.
How big is Railsr?
The British fintech company has raised over $187 million in equity funding with solid backing from prominent investors, including Visa. In October 2022, the company announced the completion of a $46m Series C funding round.
The company has also made some major acquisitions. In August 2020, it acquired the German company Wirecard. It also scored a milestone last year when it appointed Rick Haythornthwaite, the former chairman of MasterCard and current chair of Ocado and the AA, as its chairman.
However, Railsr has been affected by the recent economic downturns amid other issues. The British fintech has had waves of layoffs. Also, Northern Borealis, a Cyprus-registered freight company, sued a subsidiary of Railsr, PayrNet, for their failure to pay out money from its account.
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Flutterwave’s plan
In February 2022, Flutterwave raised $250 million in a Series D round that tripled the company’s valuation to over $3 billion in just twelve months. This was a massive deal in the fintech space, and the fintech company hopes for a better plan.
Flutterwave’s CEO, Olugbenga Agboola, explained that the firm is looking to make and grow through acquisitions to further consolidate its authority in the fintech space.
The CEO further explained that “it will happen we find a fit and see a company with the same core values or culture and goal of making payments simpler across emerging markets. So we still have plans for that”.
With Flutterwave identified as one of the entities in the consortium vying to acquire Railsr, this acquisition appears to be in line with the company’s strategy, especially as Nigel Verdon, Railsr’s founder, previously claimed that the company (Railsr) is “transforming the finance industry in the same way that Apple did to the music industry when they created iTunes”.
If this acquisition goes through with Railsr, this will be Flutterwave’s second publicly disclosed acquisition since the company paid an undisclosed six-figure amount to acquire the creator platform, Disha, in 2021.
There have been no official statements from Flutterwave and Railsr about the potential acquisition at press time.
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