Chipper Cash, an African fintech firm that specializes in
facilitating cross-border payments, recently closed a $100 million
Series C funding round. Taking the lead in what is now Chipper Cash‘s
third fundraising round in the past twelve months is the venture capital
(VC) firm, SVB Capital. The VC firm is an investment arm of U.S.
high-tech commercial bank, Silicon Valley Bank.
The New African Fintech Unicorn
Other notable participants in this Series C round include Deciens
Capital, Ribbit Capital as well as the Jeff Bezos backed Bezos
Expedition. Following the conclusion of this Series C funding round,
Chipper Cash has now raised a total of $143.8 million in just a year. As
a consequence, some observers now estimate Chipper Cash’s valuation to
be between one and two billion dollars.
Notably, with this capital raise, Chipper Cash becomes the latest
African fintech firm to attract the interest of leading venture capital
firms. Other African fintech start-ups that similarly received support
from major VC firms include Flutterwave, Tymebank and O Pay.
Crypto Services and the CBN Prohibition
Chipper Cash’s significant capital raise in a short space of time
came as it expanded the range of products it offers. According to a report,
the fintech firm now offers cryptocurrency trading options as well as
other business payment solutions. The report also quotes Ham Serunjogi,
the fintech’s CEO explaining some of the factors that prompted Chipper
Cash to add new services. He 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.
Nevertheless, the CEO clarifies that Chipper Cash is not currently
offering crypto-related services to its clients in Nigeria. He cites the
Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s anti-crypto directive as the sole
reason why the fintech firm cannot extend its cryptocurrency-related
services to Nigerians.
Serunjogi meanwhile says his company is still “looking forward to any
development in Nigeria that allows it to be offered freely again.”
source link : https://news.bitcoin.com/african-fintech-start-up-chipper-cash-raises-100-million-ceo-says-no-crypto-services-for-nigeria/
