Chipper Cash, an African cross-border payments startup, has raised $150 million in a Series C extension round led by FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange platform founded by Sam Bankman-Fried.
The investment comes barely six months after Chipper Cash secured a $100 million Series C round funded by SVB Capital, SVB Financial Group’s corporate venture capital arm.
SVB Capital, as well as other previous investors such as Deciens Capital, Ribbit Capital, Bezos Expeditions, One Way Ventures, and Tribe Capital, reinvested in this extension round.
Serunjogi and Maijid Moujaled founded Chipper Cash in 2018 to provide a no-fee peer-to-peer cross-border payment service in Africa via its app. Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa, and Kenya are among the countries that use its services.
This year, the company began to expand beyond the continent. It extended to the United Kingdom in May, allowing users to send money from the European nation to Chipper Cash’s African markets.
Chipper Cash has also been working with social payment systems. Twitter launched its Tips feature, also known as Tip Jar, earlier this year to allow authors to earn money on the platform. To make it available in different regions, the social media company linked with some payment platforms.
As creators in developed countries have the option of receiving tips via PayPal, Patreon, GoFundMe, Cash App, and Venmo, Chipper Cash was selected to provide the service to African creators via its payments link.
Chipper Cash’s partnership with Twitter and cross-border expansion into the U. S. show the company’s growth potential, and the funding from FTX just adds to it.
FTX is one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency derivatives exchanges. The company raised $420 million in a round last month, valued at $25 billion.
Chipper Cash is FTX’s first investment in Africa, and it adds to a growing list of indicators pointing to serious crypto growth on the continent. On the FTX crypto trading platform, Africans will be able to “Pay with Chipper Cash.”