Chipper Cash joins the league of African Unicorns with a $100m Series C raise

Fresh from raising $30 million in series B funding led by Ribbit Capital and Bezos Expeditions in November 2020, Chipper Cash announced that it has raised $100 million in a new Series C raise. In June 2020, Chipper Cash also raised $13.8 million Series A funding round led by Deciens Capital. With this new raise, the African cross-border fintech startup has joined the league of African Unicorns including Flutterwave, Interswitch, Fawry and Jumia

The new raise led by SVB Capital, brings total funds raised to $152.2 million. Other participants in this round include existing investors — Deciens Capital, Ribbit Capital, Bezos Expeditions, One Way Ventures, 500 Startups, Tribe Capital, and Brue2 Ventures.

Chipper Cash was founded by Ham Serunjogi (Uganda) and Maijid Moujaled (Ghana) in October 2018 and currently has offices in Ghana and Nigeria. It offers no-fee, P2P, cross-border mobile-money payments in Africa. It is currently present in seven African countries – Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa, Kenya – and one non-African country, United Kingdom.

In a discussion with Techcrunch, the CEO Ham Serunjogi said the company has launched cards products in Nigeria and it has also launched its crypto product. He said that the company will be also launching its US stocks product in Uganda, Nigeria and a few other countries soon.

Early last year, the company partnered with Visa in its plan to expand its reach in Africa.

Chipper Cash intends to use the new funds to introduce more products and grow its 200+ team by hiring 100 staff throughout the year.

It is interesting to note that it is increasingly getting shorter for African companies to achieve the Unicorn status. While it took the likes of Interswitch and Fawry more than ten years to achieve this status, it took Flutterwave five years; Jumia, four years; and Chipper Cash three years. OPay is also planning to join this league as the Chinese-backed and Africa-focused fintech platform is in talks to raise up to $400 million to achieve this.