The African no-fee, cross-border payment startup Chipper Cash has expanded to Nigeria.
The San Francisco-based startup, with offices in Ghana and Kenya, will offer its P2P payment service and app in Africa’s
most populous nation in partnership with Paystack — the payment gateway company. Paystack CEO Shola Akinlade confirmed the collaboration.
Chipper Cash will establish a company presence in Lagos and has hired a country manager, Abiodun Animashaun, co-founder of Lagos-based ride-hail startup Gokada. The startup went live in October 2018, joining a field of fintech startups aiming to scale digital finance applications across Africa’s billion-plus population.
Chipper Cash was co-founded by Serunjogi (from Uganda) and Ghanaian Maijid Moujaled, both of whom emigrated to the U.S. to study and work in Silicon Valley.
Chipper Checkout will make its debut in Nigeria several months after Chipper Cash’s mobile-payments launch, according to Serunjogi. The imperative to move to Nigeria was pretty straightforward. Nigeria is the largest economy and most populous country in Africa. Its fintech industry is one of the most advanced in Africa, up there with Kenya and South Africa, he said.I think for any company doing fintech across borders, that is looking to be successful in Africa, it’s imperative that you have a presence in Nigeria.
A major offering for Chipper Cash is its no-fee cross-border P2P mobile payment service, which helps as many as 70,000 active users make payments. Already, the startup claims to have processed 250,000 transactions on its platform. The startup also runs Chipper Checkout: a merchant-focused, fee-based C2B mobile payments product that supports its no-feemobile-money business. The Company raised a $2.4 million seed round led by Deciens Capital this May.
The payments company also persuaded 500 Startups and Liquid 2 Ventures — co-founded by American football legend
Joe Montana — to join the round.
Chipper Cash, along with payments company Flutterwave and digital lending startup, Mines, maintains a presence in
San Francisco. This structure is enabling their efforts to become global fintech players while maintaining a presence in Africa.
