By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Africa’s leading payments technology company, Flutterwave, now has a new chief financial officer and is Mr Oneal Bhambani, who is joining the firm from American Express.
In a statement on Tuesday, it was disclosed that Mr Bhambani will serve a key function in enabling the company’s expansion with best-in-class discipline, operational controls and financial rigour and the appointee has expressed his desire to achieve this goal.
“It is a rare opportunity to join a high-scale, de facto market leader in one of the fastest-growing markets in the world.
“I am looking forward to partnering with Flutterwave’s team to enable solutions for our customers in Africa and across the globe. I fully expect to apply best-in-class strategies learned from my tenures at American Express and Kabbage,” he was quoted as saying in the statement made available to Business Post.
At American Express and Kabbage, the new CFO managed fintech businesses operating at scale and helped lead the sale of Kabbage and its integration within American Express’ Global Commercial Services segment.
At Kabbage, he was responsible for all of the company’s financial operations and functions including IPO-ready financial and operational controls.
Following the American Express acquisition in April 2022, he was the CFO and Head of Capital Markets of Kabbage’s business unit, which provides credit, banking, and payments solutions to American Express’ commercial customers.
Before and after the acquisition, he was a key stakeholder in capital allocation and led critical strategic initiatives for the business.
Earlier in his career, Mr Bhambani was a growth-stage investor at The TCW Group (an investment firm owned by The Carlyle Group), and Riverwood Capital. He began his career in investment banking at UBS.
“I am excited to welcome Oneal to Flutterwave. His track record of operating finance to enable scale and innovation with listed company standard financial controls will help us accelerate our growth as we continue to meet the needs of our expanding global customer base.
“I am also looking forward to working with Oneal on deal-related initiatives, given the number of inorganic opportunities we are seeing in today’s market environment,” the founder and CEO of Flutterwave, Mr Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola, said.
The value of Flutterwave is believed to be more than $3 billion after it recently completed its $250 million in Series D funding.
Aduragbemi Omiyale