Chipper Cash, Owned By Two Africans, Becomes Latest Billion Dollar Startup
- A Fintech company built by Ham Serunjogi and Maijid Moujaled has become a unicorn company
- Chipper Cash became a billion-dollar startup following a new fundraising that increased its market value
- Two months ago, Nigerian payment startup, Flutterwave, had increased its company worth to over a billion-dollar
Chipper Cash is the latest fintech company in Africa to become a unicorn after its recent $100 million fundraising in a series C round which involved new and existing venture capital investors.
Silicon Valley Bank's investment arm, SVB Capital, led the funding round, with Deciens Capital, Ribbit Capital, Bezos Expeditions, One Way Ventures, 500 Startups, Tribe Capital, and Brue2 Ventures contributing to the $100 million.
The new capital took Chipper Cash total funding raising since inception to $152.2 million, and increased the payment and remittance company's valuation to between $1 billion and $2 billion.
With its fiat and cryptocurrency investment and payment options, Chipper Cash offers a peer-to-peer service in Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa and Kenya.
Source: Instagram
Chipper Cash was co-founded by Ugandan, Ham Serunjogi, and Ghanaian, Maijid Moujaled. Commenting on the operation of the company, and why it chooses its offerings, Serunjogi said:
“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.”
He added that:
“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."
Before Chipper Cash became a Unicorn, Nigerian startup, Flutterwave, had crossed the one billion-dollar mark, becoming the first African-owned digital company to do so.
Meanwhile, Legit.ng had previously reported that Twitter is set to introduce a new feature called Twitter Blue. It will cost the social media's users in Nigeria and other countries $3.
The feature consist of several options that will allow users make changes to their Twitter outlook, undo tweets, amongst several others. It will give users more control over their tweets.
The time for the introduction hasn't been disclosed, however, Jack Dorsey's company has been looking for means to charge users directly and reduce its revenue dependence on advert income.
Source: Legit.ng
