AFRICAN CROSS-BORDER STARTUP CHIPPER CASH CLOSES $13.8M SERIES A
An African Cross-border payment startup Chipper Cash closes a $13.8 million Series A funding round backed by Deciens Capital, and also intends to hire 30 more staff globally. The subject fintech startup whose founders, Ugandan ‘Ham Serunjogi’ and Ghanaian ‘Maijid Moujaled’ met in America, while both had previously ventured out to Silicon Valley – Facebook for Serunjogi and Flickr and Yahoo for Moujaled before they developed Chipper Cash.
After the San Francisco based startup had convinced 500 startups and Liquid 2 Ventures, co-founded by ‘Joe Montana’ to support their payment company with seed funds, Chipper Cash after its launch in 2018 had raised $22 million in total capital. A payment company that offers its mobile platform with no fee, people-to-people payment services currently in seven different countries in Africa. Namely Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda and not excluding South Africa.
The Ugandan Serunjogi had also told TechCrunch via phone call that “We’re now at over one and a half million users and doing over a $100 million dollars a month in volume”.
It’s also understood the company does little or hesitate to release its audited financial information, rather share internal performance accounting with investors. However, the current financing round was led by Deciens Capital and Raptor Group which equally saw the participatory support from 500 Startups and Liquid 2 Ventures.
Prior to this development (Chipper Cash closes…), a branch of the startup that is also run by the company – Chipper Checkout has remained a fee-based mobile payment product that generates the revenue used to support Chipper Cash’s no fee mobile platform business.
The company recently moved and brought in a new compliance officer ‘Lisa Dawson’ who already has background with the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and Citigroup’s anti-money laundering department. While, in the same vein, Chipper Cash has also made it clear it will use its latest round to hire up to 30 new staff across operations in San Francisco, Lagos, Nairobi, London and New York the company co-founder said. Adding that:
“You know in the world we live in the AML side is very important so it’s an area that we want to invest in from the get-go”.
It’s been confirmed ‘Lisa Dawson’s’ role would be getting Chipper Cash ready to meet regulatory requirements for new markets, though yet unknown. While on the other hand, the company has also picked a corporate social responsibility component in addition to its business, which is related to the current racial concern in the United States. Based on this, it has formed the Chipper Fund for Black Lives. Serunjogi added that:
“We’ve been huge beneficiaries of the generosity and openness of this country and its entrepreneurial spirit. But growing up in Africa, we were able to navigate [the U.S.] without the traumas and baggage our African friends have gone through living in America”.
Based on this development, the Chipper Fund for Black Lives will be structured to give 5 to 10 grants of $5,000 to $10,000. According to the co-founder ‘Serunjogi’ “the plan is to give that to…people or causes who are furthering social justice reforms”.
Lastly, it’s evident Chipper Cash is working very hard to establish a strong financial and organizational structure.
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