Flutterwave has denied being a victim of a cyber attack that resulted in millions of dollars missing from its accounts. The billion-dollar company made this known in a statement via its official blog platform on Sunday, 5 March 2023.

This update is following an earlier report by local tech publication, Techpoint Africa where it alleged that Flutterwave had been involved in a hack that resulted in over ₦2.9 billion (~$4.2 million) missing from its accounts.

According to the documents seen by the publication, unknown actors transferred the funds across 28 accounts in 63 transactions in early February. Police investigations are ongoing as Flutterwave, via legal counsel and law enforcement parties, has filed a motion and seeks to freeze accounts across 27 financial institutions that interacted with the missing funds, Techpoint Africa reported. 

Several tweets regarding the alleged hack have also come up over the weekend. Some provided information about the hack, while others complained about frozen accounts that might be related to the hack. According to Techpoint Africa, the motion filed that 107 accounts, including the fifth beneficiaries of those accounts, are to be placed on lien/Post-No-Debit (PND). This directive restricts bank customers from withdrawing funds from their accounts. 

The cause and method of the attack remain unclear. However, one of the postulations from the online commentary is that the hack might have been socially engineered, meaning that merchants’ keys were compromised, allowing the hackers to access the monies in their Flutterwave accounts. 

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A developing update from Flutterwave shows that the company was not involved in any hack that led to the transfer of such amounts from its accounts. The statement read in part:

"At Flutterwave, we understand that our customer’s personal and financial information is of the utmost importance. We take this responsibility seriously and understand that any potential security breach can cause anxiety and concern among our customers. 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. We collaborate with other financial institutions and law enforcement agencies to keep our ecosystem safe and secure.

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 (in line with our standard operating procedure), which revealed that some users who had not activated some of our recommended security settings might have been susceptible."

See the full report here