Nigerian fintech Flutterwave has reportedly lost $4 million to hackers who penetrated the company’s systems in early February. The money was allegedly disbursed to accounts in various financial institutions in Nigeria.
Reports indicate that a motion to freeze these accounts has been filed.
It is still unclear who hacked the fintech’s accounts. Flutterwave is one of Africa’s highly-regarded startups, and there are still several unanswered questions about what this means to the unicorn’s customers. Several media houses have reported requesting for a response from the company without any success.
According to Business Insider Africa, some Flutterwave customers have reported that some commercial banks allowed the money to be moved to other accounts, complicating the money trail.
“Some Twitter users have confirmed that their accounts have been frozen in connection to the hack,” Business Insider reports.
Flutterwave has had considerable success across the continent and beyond, but has equally been plagued by several cases of misappropriation and mismanagement.
Last year, the Kenyan High Court froze the company’s accounts for several months on suspicion of money laundering. The order was later lifted after the company was cleared of any wrongdoing by the Assets Recovery Authority(ARA).
Flutterwave has managed to sail above the storms preceded by these challenges, but it remains to be seen how the firm handles the new allegations of account hacking.
Update
Fluttewave has since issued a statement in response to the hacking claims.
In the statement on its official blog posted by Head of Branding, Yewande “Wendy” Akomolafe-Kalu on March 5, 2023, the fintech said that its systems had not been hacked.
“We want to reassure you that Flutterwave has not been hacked.” However, the company explained that a routine check revealed an “unusual trend of transactions on some users’ profiles. ” After a review, the firm expounds, the team “revealed that some users who had not activated some of our recommended security settings might have been susceptible.”
Flutterwave further says, “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.”
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