Chipper Cash – an African cross-border payments company, has raised the sum of $150 million in a Series C extension round led by Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency exchange platform FTX – a Bahamian-based cryptocurrency exchange platform that allows users to trade cryptocurrencies run by Sam Bankman-Fried.
The investment comes barely six months after Chipper Cash closed its first Series C round of $100 million, led by SVB Capital – the corporate venture capital arm of SVB Financial Group.
This however has positioned the company as the seventh African unicorn, joining in the ranks alongside Interswitch, Flutterwace, Opay, Faery, Andel and Wave.
Founded by Serunjogi and Maijid Moujaled in 2018 to offer free cross-border payment service in Africa via a mobile app, Chipper Cash operates in seven African countries — Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa and Kenya.
In May, after the initial $100 million series C round, the company expanded into the UK to power UK to Africa peer-to-peer (P2P) remittance.Chipper Cash is FTX’s first investment in Africa.
A move that hints that FTX is impressed by how Chipper Cash has been able to scale in the space of three years and its interest in the crypto space. Chipper Cash boasts of having over 4 million users across the world.The investment will see FTX partner with Chipper Cash to make money transfer as simple as a text message and accelerate the adoption of crypto within Africa and beyond.
Per TechCrunch, Bankman-Fried revealed that despite the recent growth in Africa, moving money is still slow and expensive.
“Despite the recent growth in Africa, moving money across the continent is still slow and expensive. Unsurprisingly it is the fastest growing market with grassroots crypto adoption,” Bankman-Fried, FTX CEO, said.
As a result of this partnership, FTX will increase its footprint in Africa and Chipper Cash will be integrated into the FTX product so that African users can fund their crypto wallet through Chipper Cash.
“That’s going to be a compelling use case for both of our companies as we keep scaling and as FTX keeps scaling their geographical coverage. They do some of the most innovative work in the crypto space, so working with them is going to be quite exciting,” Serunjogi said.
