Chipper Cash, an African cross-border payments company, has announced its new $2 billion valuation after its recent Series C extension.
According to NairaMetrics, this new Series C extension raised an additional $150 million for the company. The funding was led by Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency exchange platform FTX. SVB Capital, as well as other previous investors such as Deciens Capital, Ribbit Capital, Bezos Expeditions (owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos), One Way Ventures, and Tribe Capital, reinvested in this extension round.
Chipper Cash, which was founded in 2018 by Ham Serunjogi and Maijid Moujaled, is a no-fee peer-to-peer cross-border payment service in Africa. Through their app, users can accept payments in Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa and Kenya — to name but a few places that use the app.
In 2021, the company expanded again — this time, into the United Kingdom. By using Chipper Cash, users can send money from the United Kingdom to their preferred country of choice in Africa — a move that proved to be beneficial.
“Chipper Cash’s strategy is to provide the “best pricing” while simultaneously facilitating money transfers from Africa to the United States,” reports the outlet. “According to Serunjogi, peer-to-peer money transfers from the United States to Nigeria and Uganda are now available to customers in those countries.”
Prior to this new round of funding, there was some question as to whether the company could be considered a “unicorn” — that is, a startup with a billion-dollar valuation or more. Up until this moment, it was determined that the company wasn’t a unicorn — even though TechCrunch confirmed it was one of the most valuable startups in Africa. With the Series C extension raising more funds for the company, thus placing it over the $2 billion mark, the startup is now officially a unicorn…and one of not many African companies to get such a designation.
