African payments giant Flutterwave has laid off about 30 people—around 3% of its workforce—three months after it spoke about repositioning it’s business to focus on remittance and enterprise, its two biggest revenue drivers. That change of focus led to the shutdown of Barter in March.
Flutterwave confirmed the layoffs to TechCabal but did not share specific details of the affected teams.
“After a thorough analysis of our strategic priorities, including a renewed focus on enterprise customers and remittances, we came to the conclusion that some roles within the organisation are redundant,” Flutterwave told TechCabal in a statement.
Employees were told about the layoffs at a town hall on Monday afternoon, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said. The impacted roles are connected to products the company is no longer pursuing, one person said.
“We will pay an average 3 months of gross salary, depending on the country where the employee is based,” Flutterwave said. “We will also be monetising their unutilised accrued leave days.”
In October, the fintech told TechCabal that enterprise was its biggest revenue driver while retail products had little contribution to revenues.
“Since our founding eight years ago, we have not had to implement a workforce reduction plan, but it became a necessary step in this instance in order to align our current resources with our go-forward strategy and improve our operational efficiency.”
After reshuffling some of its C-suite employees in 2024, Flutterwave revived conversations about a potential public listing that was put on ice in 2022 and 2023.
“Right now our goal is to be IPO-ready, ensuring we have the right corporate governance in place, making sure we are operating well,” CEO Gbenga Agboola told Semafor in April 2024. “We want to be a long-term company in Africa, for Africa – and so the goal is building the right infrastructure to be here for the next ten-plus years.”
*This is a developing story