Ex-Flutterwave executive Awa Koné joins Cauridor as Chief Operating Officer

Cauridor, a Guinea-based cross-border payment infrastructure company, has appointed Awa Koné, former Global Head of Operations at Flutterwave, as its Chief Operating Officer.

Koné spent over five years at Flutterwave, where she helped build and scale the company’s infrastructure across multiple markets, including Africa, Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Before that, she served as General Manager at Swiss Re, a Swiss reinsurance company, where she led a greenfield expansion into Côte d’Ivoire. 

Koné’s appointment comes as Cauridor moves beyond its early infrastructure-building phase and pushes into new markets. With cross-border payment operations spanning 36 countries, the company is tapping an executive who has managed that complexity at scale. 

Founded in Guinea in 2022 by Oumar Barry and Abdoulaye Bah, Cauridor positions itself as the infrastructure that sits in the middle of cross-border payments. It integrates mobile money providers, banks, and international money transfer operators through an Application Programming Interface (API) to enable these transactions. 

“I am excited to join Cauridor at such a pivotal moment,” said Koné. “The opportunity to help build infrastructure that simplifies cross-border payments and unlocks real economic opportunities across the African continent is incredibly compelling.” 

She described the role as an opportunity to apply her experience across operations, risk, treasury, and cross-border payments to a company still shaping its infrastructure. 

Caurido is built primarily for international money transfer operators, mobile network operators, banks, fintechs, SMEs, and payroll service providers. It currently operates in 36 African countries, including Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Senegal, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, and the Gambia, and is now eyeing entry into the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). 

“Cross-border payments in Africa are fragmented, expensive, and inaccessible to the people who need them most,” said Barry. “We bridge that gap, enabling customers to send from one mobile wallet across borders, into other wallets, or to cash pickup points in receiving markets.”

Cauridor differentiates itself from infrastructure-only players through a hybrid model: B2B rails for fintechs, banks, and money transfer operators, alongside a B2C agent network under its consumer brand, BnB. It competes with the likes of Onafriq, TerraPay, Thunes, and Nala.

“Most infrastructure players are purely B2B,” Barry said. “Through our B2C brand, BnB, we also operate an extensive agent network across West and Central Africa. That gives us last-mile reach that strengthens the reliability of our B2B infrastructure.”

The appointment comes one year after Cauridor’s  $3.5 million seed round to strengthen its infrastructure across Francophone Africa. With Koné now leading operations, the company said its focus will be on deepening its presence in existing markets while preparing for DRC entry.

“We are building something significant at Cauridor and having her lead our operations puts us in a strong position for what comes next,” Barry said.