• Over the weekend several publications reported that Africa’s largest startup, Flutterwave suffered a hack where an estimated $4.2 million was stolen from user accounts.
• The startup has since refuted the claims, noting that it has not suffered any hack.
• It noted that there was some suspicious activity, but that no funds were stolen.

In recent days several publications have been reported on a hack at Flutterwave, which is the largest startup in Africa (by valuation). One of the first to do so was Techpoint Africa, which says that as much as $4.2 million was stolen from user accounts, as hackers illegally transferred money without the knowledge of account holders.

Adding credence to the reports were international publications like TechCrunch, which reviewed documents regarding the hack, noting that roughly bad actors transferred funds across 28 accounts in 63 transactions in early February.

Now Flutterwave has taken to its own blog to clear up the allegations, or rather explain what happened last month.

“We want to reassure you that Flutterwave has not been hacked. As a financial institution, we monitor transactions through our transaction monitoring systems and 24-hour fraud desk and review any suspicious activity,” explained the startup.

“During a routine check of our transaction monitoring system, we identified an unusual trend of transactions on some users’ profiles. Our team immediately launched a review (inline with our standard operating procedure), which revealed that some users who had not activated some of our recommended security settings might have been susceptible,” it added.

It remains unclear as to who is telling the truth in this matter, with Techpoint Africa citing a motion to freeze the impacted accounts, with 27 financial institutions being contacted over 107 user accounts. Customers also shared screenshots of the freezing of their Flutterwave accounts on social media.

As such, this is very much a developing story given the fact that all the information is to be shared with the public.

The fintech platform, however, is reiterating that while there was indeed some suspicious activity, which was identified and addressed, no funds were stolen in a hack.

“We want to confirm that no user lost any funds, and we take pride in the fact that our security measures were able to address the issue before any harm could be done to our users,” the company concluded.

We’ll be tracking this developing story and provide further updates as they surface.

[Image – Provided]