Kippa’s new Super-Agent banking licence from CBN will increase the company’s drive to assist Nigerian SMEs

Kippa, the all-in-one financial management solution for small businesses in Africa, announced it has obtained a Super Agent Banking Licence from the Central Bank of Nigeria. According to a press release, “With this approval, Kippa will build its network of merchants, providing them with the infrastructure and tools to offer financial products and services to their customers.”

Super Agents are companies licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria to recruit agents for the purpose of agency banking i.e. provision of financial services within communities on behalf of banks. Kippa says its “merchants can now accept offline payments from customers and, more importantly, increase customer footfall, customer retention, and business revenue by offering financial products and services on Kippa’s infrastructure.”

Agency Banking as a concept has successfully led to very high levels of financial inclusion & financial literacy as well as an overwhelming level of convenient banking services leveraging on the nature of communal living in Nigeria and financial technology, giving rise to another type of value stakeholder in the finance industry.

Any institution that wishes to be licensed as a Super-Agent shall submit an application for approval to the
CBN. The application shall be submitted to the Director, Banking & Payments System Department, Central
Bank of Nigeria, Abuja.

Applicants shall supply information to the CBN as may be required from time to time. A Super-Agent shall be licensed by the CBN under the following requirements:

a. Must be a company with an existing business, operational for at least 12 months
b. Must be registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC)
c. Must have a minimum Shareholders’ Fund, unimpaired by losses of N50million
d. Must obtain a reference letter from a Financial Institution (FI) as part of its documentation
for licence
e. Must have a minimum of 50 agents

Kippa’s license issuance comes off the back of its recent appointment of Niyi Ajao, former Deputy Managing Director at the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), as Chairman, and Oluwatoyin Albert as Executive Director for Payment Services.

“We’ve done an incredible job acquiring and onboarding merchants from all nooks and crannies of Nigeria. We aim to further empower these merchants by providing them with the tools and infrastructure to provide financial services to their customers. This is already yielding results”, Kennedy Ekezie-Joseph, CEO of Kippa, explains.

Looking at our counterparty data, merchants activated on KippaPay are in the 90th percentile of Kippa merchants regarding customer retention: so, they have more customers, and a higher number of transactions per customer”, Kennedy Ekezie-Joseph adds.

“We are excited to offer further financial services to our merchants, which align with the CBN’s broader financial inclusion strategy. We are fully aware of the existing regulatory framework and requirements and will continue to drive our initiatives to millions of Nigerians while engaging all stakeholders concerned”, Toyin Albert, Executive Director, Payment Services, says.

Kippa launched in June 2021 as an all-inclusive financial management platform for businesses. The company has served over 500,000 merchants within its network, recording an annual transaction value of over $3 billion. The Nigerian fintech startup announced five months later that it had raised $3.2 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Berlin-based VC Target Global.