African Startup Chipper Cash Becomes Unicorn after Round Led by FTX

African cross-border payments company Chipper Cash raised $150 million in a Series C extension round steered by Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency exchange platform FTX.

The funding follows a six-month period when Chipper Cash concluded its first Series C round of $100 million, which was led by Silicon Valley BankVentures Capital. SVB capital, the venture capital investment branch of SVB Financial Group, participated in the extension round again, with other investors like Deciens Capital, Ribbit Capital, Bezos Expeditions, One Way Ventures, and Tribe Capital. Newer investors in the round are yet to be disclosed.

Chipper Cash’s total amount collected from both the Series C rounds reached $250 Million, while the total funding to this day is approximately $305 Million.

Chief Executive Officer of Chipper Cash, Ham Serunjogi, announced its Series C round by calling the company one of the most valuable private startups in Africa. The African startup founded in 2018 has now officially become a unicorn after the funding round, with a valuation of around $2 Billion.

The company was established by Serunjogi with Majid Moujaled to furnish its customers with a no-fee peer-to-peer cross-border payment service in Africa through its application. The startup extends its services to seven African countries- Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa, and Kenya. In 2021, the company started opening up to European markets in the U.K., enabling people to send money from the UK to Chipper Cash’s African markets. 

Recently in the last month, Chipper Cash with around four million users traversed into the competitive and bustling route from the US to Africa. The corridor, for now, is dominated by giants like Wise, MoneyGram, Sendwave, and Remitly, with the US being accountable for around thirty percent of the money being sent to sub-Saharan Africa. 

It is well-known that sending money to sub-Saharan Africa requires the highest tariffs in the world. To enter such a high competition market, Chipper Cash aims to provide the best prices to help in convenient money transfers from Africa to the US. While platforms like WorldRemit provide an option to send money from particular countries in Africa to the US Chipper Cash can not claim to be a pioneer in this category.

Having said that, money transfers from the US to Nigeria and Uganda is currently available for users in those market. The expansion to users in Ghana, South Africa, and Kenya will begin before the New Year.