African Fintech Startup Chipper Cash Convinces USD 2.4 Mn Funding From Deciens Capital
African no-fee, borderless payment startup Chipper Cash has secured a USD 2.4 Mn in a seed round led by Deciens Capital with participation from 500 Startups and Liquid 2 Ventures.
The San Francisco-based fintech which has offices in Ghana and Nairobi, was co-founded by Ham Serunjogi from Ghana and Majid Moujalled from Uganda. The startup offers no-fee, P2P, cross-border mobile money payments, with the vision to “do to money what WhatsApp did to texting”.
Chipper Cash began its operations in October 2018 and has since then processed more than 250,000 transactions for over 7,000 active users. The venture launched to join the proliferate fintech space of Africa, in which most startups have their eyes set on scaling digital finance applications for the over 1 billion people.
Details have it that the fintech was able to convince American football icon Joe Montana and his company Liquid 2 Ventures and 500 Startups to participate in the round. Alongside the fundraise, Chipper Cash is unveiling Chipper Checkout, a merchant-focused C2B mobile payments initiative.
While app-based Chipper Cash is offered at no costs, the new product is not free, as it’s revenue and generated income will be used by the former to support its no-fee mobile money venture. A report says that 500 Startups’ Sheel Mohnot, who led the Chipper Cash investment, drew an analogy between the fintech’s model and that of PayPal.
“When PayPal started it was just a consumer to consumer free app. It still is free for consumer to consumer, they but they monetized the merchant side. That model is tried and tested. It just doesn’t exist in Africa, so Chipper has the opportunity to do that,” he told TechCrunch.
Chipper Cash which also has operations in Rwanda and Tanzania, will make inroads into more African countries in 12 months, sequel to the investment. The startup also looks to harness the global remittance market for Sub-Saharan Africa, which currently is worth around USD 38 Bn.
