Kippa, a tech company offering financial and bookkeeping services to merchants, has now obtained a licence from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to operate as a super agent. With this licence, the fintech company makes low income earners gain access to digital financial services.
It will also enable merchants to accept offline payments from customers, increase customer acquisition, retention and business revenue by offering financial products and services on its infrastructure.
Why it matters
Super agents are financial entities licensed by an authorized bank to offer banking services. Super agents have been spreading out across the country since CBN put forth regulations for the operations of super agents [PDF] in 2015. Innovectives Limited and Interswitch.
Financial Inclusion Services Limited were some of the first to work under the framework and operate as super agents. Telecoms like MTN and Airtel have also hopped on this development to offer services in place of a traditional bank.
- The licence will enable Kippa to offer the following CBN-regulated services: cash deposit and withdrawal; bills payment (utilities, taxes, tenement rates, subscription etc.); payment of salaries; funds transfer services (local money value transfer); cash disbursement and loan repayment among others.
It will also deepen the reach of financial services to unbanked and underbanked communities.
What you should note
- Kippa was founded in 2021 and just a year after its launch, it has raised a total of $3.2 million in funding. Their latest funding was raised in December 2021 from a Convertible Note.
The company has 400,000+ micro businesses using its platform.
What the company said:
“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, stated.
Commenting also on the issuance of the licence was Toyin Albert, Executive Director, Payment Services.
“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”, he said.
