By Adedapo Adesanya
African cross-border payments startup, Chipper Cash, has raised a $100 million Series C led by a United States-based Venture Capital (VC) firm, SVB Capital.
Founded by Messrs Ham Serunjogi and Maijid Moujaled in 2018, Chipper Cash offers mobile-based, no fee, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) cross-border payment services, across up to seven African countries — Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa and Kenya.
The company is also present in the United Kingdom, the first country it has expanded to outside Africa.
Business Post reports that with its latest round of funds, the organisation said it plans to introduce more products and grow its team.
The company has raised up to $152 million in just two years with $8.4 million raised in two seed rounds in 2019 and then in June 2020. It followed this by raising $13.8 million Series A led by Deciens Capital and by November 2020, it closed a whopping $30 million Series B led by Ribbit Capital and Bezos Expeditions.
Chipper Cash CEO speaks
Speaking on the latest round of funding with Tech Crunch, the Chief Executive Officer of the company, Mr Serunjogi projects that Chipper Cash is likely the most valuable private startup in Africa.
“We have launched cards products in Nigeria and we’ve also launched our crypto product. We are also launching our US stocks product in Uganda, Nigeria and a few other countries soon.
“Our approach to growing products and adding products is based on what our users find valuable. As you can imagine, crypto is one technology that has been widely adopted in Africa and many emerging markets. So, we want to give them the power to access crypto and to be able to buy, hold, and sell crypto whenever,” the CEO added.
“As fintech explodes and as innovation continues to move forward, consumers have to be protected. We invest millions of dollars every year in our compliance programs, so I think working closely with the regulators directly so that these products are offered in a compliant manner is important,” Mr Serunjogi told Tech Crunch.
This, however, cements the company’s status following Flutterwave (a private startup) valued at over $1 billion and Jumia (a public company) currently valued at $2.6 billion, this round should put Chipper Cash’s valuation anywhere between $1 billion and $2.5 billion.
However, Mr Serunjogi refuses to focus on valuations and would rather set his sights on growing his team and launching interesting new products so as to expand the footprint of the firm.
“We’re not getting into our valuation, but we’re probably the most valuable private startup in Africa today after this round. So that’s a reflection of the environment that regulators like CBN have created to allowed innovation and growth,” he said.
As of June 2020, the company stated that it plans to hire over a hundred staff in addition to its workforce of 200 workers. Its users have reportedly increased to 4 million, up 33 per cent from last year while it claimed to process 80,000 daily transactions in November its current transaction volumes have not been disclosed.
As for products, the company seems to be planning other products in addition to the crypto platform it launched in 2020.
“We’re also launching our US stocks product in Uganda, Nigeria and a few other countries soon,” he said.
Mr Serunjogi claims the company is already engaging regulators ahead and lauded the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for fostering innovation in the fintech sector even after a regulatory clampdown on cryptocurrencies and foreign stocks trading.
“Nigeria has probably the most exciting and vibrant tech ecosystem in Africa. And that’s credit directly to CBN for creating and fostering an environment that allowed multiple startups like ourselves and others like Flutterwave to blossom,” he added.
Dipo Olowookere