In a seemingly progressive week for African startups, Cross-border Payment Company, Chipper Cash, raised $30 million in a Series B funding round.
Led by American-based Ribbit Capital, the funding round had other investors in participation, including Jeff Bezos’ personal VC – Bezos Expedition.
Recall that the startup had previously raised $13.8 million in a Series-A funding led by Deciens Capital.
As for the latest, the two-year-old startup plans to use the investment to improve its products as well as facilitate expansion into new markets.
Speaking of which, the investment will ensure the completion of newer business payment solutions.
These new payment solutions include crypto-currency trading options and investment services.
According to Chipper Cash CEO, Ham Serunjogi, the need to come up with newer solutions stems from users’ demands.
While speaking to Techcrunch, Serunjogi explained that “We’ll always be a P2P financial transfer platform at our core.”
“We’ve had demand from our users to offer other value services…like purchasing cryptocurrency assets and making investments I stocks,” he added.
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Talking about investment product, Chipper Cash Boss went further:
“We will launch (the stock product) in Nigeria first so Nigerians have the option to buy fractional stocks through our app.”
Talking about fractional shares, Serujogi was referring to the likes of Tesla Shares, Apple Shares, Amazon and others.
More so, the platform is working on incorporating these payment solutions as a dedicated API on its desktop and mobile apps respectively.
About Chipper Cash
Founded by Ugandan Ham Serunjogi, and Ghanaian Majid Moujalad, Chipper Cash launched in October 2018.
At inception, the platform started as a P2P payment service with presence in seven African countries; Uganda, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, and Ghana.
It was also popular for charging zero fees on its mobile-based payment services.
Source: Dignited
However, the startup is now operating another merchant-focused payment product known as Chipper Checkout.
Contrary to its normal free services, the company charges a token on every transaction that is carried out on Chipper Checkout.
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While the platform’s services are mostly free, the Chipper Checkout which was introduced back in May 2019, allows the startup to generate revenue.
In terms of active users, the platform has experienced relatively rapid growth over the last two years and some weeks of existence.
Following its seed funding of $2.4 million in May 2019, the company reported approximately 70,000 active users.
By December 2019 when it secured a second seed funding of $6 million, the platform’s active users had already grown to 600,000.
In the latest development, the platform boasts of over 3 million active users with an average of 80,000 transactions daily.
What Techuncode thinks
The latest round brings Chipper Cash’s total seed investment since inception in 2018 to $52.2 million.
With this major boost in investment, seeing a major player like Jeff Bezos come onboard isn’t surprising.
While the latest achievement is not for Chipper Cash alone, it gives hope to other players in the African region.
Recall that the biggest liquidity event in African tech took place last month. Then, Stripe acquired Nigeria’s foremost payment gateway startup, PayStack, for $200 million.
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Beyond that, there has been a soaring interest from foreign investors in the African continent.
Just in 2020 alone, Nigeria startups have raised over $100 million despite the grasp of COVID-19.
We can, however, hope for more investment from local and foreign investors even as we have about 42 days to the end of the year.
What do you think about Chipper Cash Series B funding? Kindly share your thought with us in the comment section below.
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