Olugbenga Agboola is a Nigerian entrepreneur and financial technology engineer. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of San Francisco and Lagos-based financial services company, Flutterwave. Flutterwave is a digital payments infrastructure that caters for banks and businesses in order to ensure secured payments. Agboola was initially the Chief Technology Officer of Flutterwave.
Flutterwave was founded in 2016 by co-ounders, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji and Agboola, as well as a team of African payments, technology and banking veterans from Standard Bank, Google Wallet, Andela and PayPal. After Aboyeji stepped down as the CEO of Flutterwave, in pursuit of focusing on his family goals and to give back to the start-up community that contributed to his success, Agboola became the company’s CEO in 2018.
Agboola is a Certified Ethical Hacker, Certified Security Analyst and Microsoft Certified System Engineer. He is a technology solution product developer, and has a background in software engineering.
He has contributed to the development of fintech solutions at fintech companies and financial institutions such as PayPal and Standard Bank.
Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Agboola holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology from the Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He achieved the standard IT security certifications from EC-Council University which is headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He received his Project Management and Advanced Computing degree from the University of Westminster in London, England. Agboola has a master’s degree in information technology security and behavioral engineering.
He was the Technology (e-business) Product Developer/Project Manager at Standard Bank Nigeria from April 2010 to June 2014, as well as the Head of Mobile Financial Services at Sterling Bank from July 2014 to October 2014. He was the Google Product Manager from October 2014 to November 2014 and was part of the Management Program at The Wharton School in 2015. He was the Head of Digital Factory and Innovation at Access Bank from November 2014 to May 2016.
Agboola was the Senior Entrepreneur in Residence at Africa Fintech Foundry from May 2016 to August 2018. He is currently an entrepreneur at Royal Bank of Scotland Business and has been since October 2018. He was part of the Strategic Marketing Program at Northwestern University at the Kellogg School of Management in Evanston, Illinois in 2017.
His skills stream through Development Tools, Hacking, JavaScript, PHP, PHP Applications, Product Innovation, Product Life Cycle Management, Product Management, Product Marketing, Retail Banking, Security Management, Agent Management System, Card Management Solution and Server Administration. Agboola came up with a Biometric Payment Solution for Standard Bank.
He currently has a mobile money project which he started in 2011. This project offers banking services to people via their mobile phones. It enables anyone with a mobile phone to open a bank account and access banking services such as access to card services, money transfer services, bill payment, merchant services and cardless withdrawals on ATM’s.
In recognition of his stunning exuberance in financial technology, Agboola was listed as one of the Quartz Africa Innovators 2019 on 19 September 2019.
Agboola was part of the panel for the US Africa Business Summit in Maputo, Mozambique, and spoke during the session of Transforming African Economies Through Digitalization on 20 June 2019.
In May 2019, Agboola was selected as one of six African entrepreneurs to join Endeavor, a non-profit organization that supports high impact entrepreneurs around the world.
Meanwhile, Agboola announced in January, 2020 that he managed to raise $35 million in order to facilitate more payments at Flutterwave. The company will use these funds in order to expand its operations to other countries.
Under Agboola’s leadership, Flutterwave has been able to complete the Series B Extension round of financing. The latest round of his financing includes investments from MasterCard, CRE Ventures, Fintech Collective, 4DX Ventures and Raba Capital.
Agboola is part of the board of directors for the Corporate Council on Africa.
He is the Chairman of the Board of Directors at the Great Ife Alumni Association Inc, constituted of graduates and associates of Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria.
Agboola became a member of Fast Company’s, a monthly American business magazine, Impact Council, consisting of entrepreneurs, technologists, corporate chieftains, and designers in 2019.
In 2020, Agboola was listed among the 40 under 40 in the Technology category by Fortune.
