African FinTech Chipper Cash Gets $6M To Enter New Markets

Chipper Cash, a FinTech startup in Africa that facilitates cross-border peer-to-peer (P2P) payment services in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Uganda and Ghana, has raised $6 million in a seed round led by Deciens Capital, according to a report.

The San Francisco-based company said it will use the money to expand its roster of employees and move into new regions.

CEO Ham Serunjogi Chipper Cash is looking to expand into a few countries, but he didn’t mention them all specifically.

“Southern Africa is an area we’re looking to expand to in 2020,” he said.

The last year has been a good one for Africa’s FinTech sector. Chipper Cash, which went live in 2018, raised $2.4 million in May of this year in a seed round that had support from Liquid 2 Ventures, which was co-founded by football star Joe Montana.

Chipper Cash moved into Nigeria in September, which is arguably the biggest market on the continent.

Dan Kimerling, the co-founder of Deciens Capital, said that he will continue his place on the board of Chipper Cash.

Chipper Cash Co-founder Ghanaian Maijid Moujaled said the company has processed over three million transactions and has upwards of 600,000 active users.

In addition to its no-fee P2P service, the company also offers a product for merchants called Chipper Checkout, which is a fee-based C2B product that helps to generate revenue.

Chipper Cash has a lot of competition in the region, including M-Pesa in Kenya, a FinTech that has tens of millions of users. However, not many African FinTechs have succeeded in capturing a large swath of the continent, and all are geographically isolated, something that Chipper Cash aims to change. The company said it will be the one to break the mold, as it is already active in several countries.

“By offering our product for free, we’re not in a pricing war or competing on a dollar-to-dollar basis,” Serunjogi said. “We’re in a pure utility war on who can provide the most value to our users. We’re quite comfortable with our position, and our long-term value proposition will speak for itself over time.”