Dash, the ‘Alipay for Africa’ calls it a day after squandering over $86m

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Dash, a Ghanaian fintech startup has officially shut down its operations after raising $86 million cumulatively after being in operation for five years.

Most recently, the cross-border payments startup with a dream to connect mobile money wallets across Africa, laid off 50% of its work staff and had its CEO suspended for financial impropriety and its failure to acquire license from the Bank of Ghana, the country’s financial services regulator.

In March last year, Dash announced it had raised $32.8 million in an oversubscribed seed round led by New York-based global private equity and venture capital firm Insight Venture Partners, with participation from Global Founders Capital and 4DX Ventures. Other investors in the round include ASK Capital, Techstars, Guillaume Pousaz’s Zinal Growth Partners, Jitendra Gupta of Jupiter Money, Amrish Rau, CEO of Pine Labs, the founders of Moss, executives from ProcessOut (acquired by Checkout.com), and the founders of PennyLane.

Founded by Prince Boakye Boampong with a bid to create a unified payments app to increase efficiency and accessibility for the estimated 1.3 billion Africans currently transacting via digital payments, Dash was inpired by M-PESA when in 2014, Mr. Boampong, while in Kenya witnessed the way most unbanked Kenyans were sending money and paying bills with M-PESA.

According to Prince Boakye Boampong, Founder, Dash at the time of the launch, “Once I saw that mobile money was more accessible to the average Kenyan, and allowed for faster transactions, without the need for traditional banking, I knew that it was forever going to change the financial landscape in Africa, however, I also recognized that interoperability would immediately pose a challenge.”

In 2020, Prince creates Dash to be a unique alternative payment network that brings together mobile money and traditional banks, to facilitate the processing of transactions for consumers and businesses. Dash went on to raise funds to expand to new markets such as Tanzania and South Africa, as well as get the licenses necessary to operate there, build out its team, invest in technology, and launch new features.

“We’re building this interoperability so a Kenyan traveling to Ghana or Ghanaian traveling to Kenya would be able to pay for stuff without having to change currencies or setting up accounts when they touch the ground .We’re taking a page from AliPay and PayTm by building features that will make the lives of our users easier without having to switch from different providers.” Prince added.

Earlier, Dash had raised an undisclosed seed round and $8 million seed fund at a later date. At its initial stages the firm recorded 200,000 users who had executed transactions worth $250 million. Then in 2021 it hit 1 million+ customers who were processing over $1 billion. In January 2022, Dash had operations in Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria and was reporting a Total Processed Volume (TPV) of over $300 million, up 3X on a monthly basis from Q4 2021.

Deven Parekh, Managing Director, Insight Partners, said “Dash stands out against competitors with its consumer-friendly, highly flexible wallet offerings to meet the needs of African consumers. Dash’s platform acts as infrastructure for the large percentage of Africans that are unbanked, removing the barriers associated with daily transactions and cash utilization. We look forward to working with Prince and the Dash team as they continue to grow and scale up.”

Before its $32.8 million raise, Dash had raised 8 million and $500,000 pre-seed round at launch. However, Crunchbase reports show that Dash had raised a total of $86.1M in funding over 6 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Oct 24, 2022 from a Debt Financing round. In total, Dash is funded by 29 investors. TriplePoint Capital and Thierry Déo are the most recent investors with $20 million debt Financing raised announced on Oct 24, 2022. 

On its launch in Kenya and Ghana, Dash promised to help users simplify money remittances, bill payments and allow them to send, receive, spend and save their money, all in a single app, with full transparency and security. Modeled on AliPay, the founder said he was building the AliPay for Africa, a unified wallet that works seamlessly across the continent, works seamlessly with all major Mobile Money accounts, debit and credit cards and bank accounts. In two years, the startup aimed to be in at least 8 African countries with over 10 million users using Dash to streamline their finances on a day-to-day basis. However, Prince didn’t see the end coming., so soon!

Dash worked so simply.

Sending and receiving money to/from a dash user was FREE. Users could send money across countries instantaneously and could also send money to any Mobile Money user, 80% cheaper than traditional means. Dash also allowed users to send money to bank accounts and PayPal accounts instantly and cheaper as well.

For Bill Payments, Dash App allowed users to pay, automate and split bills with friends. Users could buy airtime, pay for their Zuku, KPLC Postpaid & Tokens, DStv, GOtv, StarTimes, Safaricom Home and Nairobi Water bills. It also allowed users to automate these bills and would notify them 5 days before the bills are due.

Dash also had Dash for business, allowing payments such as Paybill accounts & Buy Goods Till numbers straight from the Dash app. Users could also save in two ways using Dash app. Saving for a goal, allowed one to save towards that trip, fees, sneakers etc, daily, weekly or monthly.

Dash automated the savings to fit one’s budget, users could earn 5% per annum. Savings for interest earned up to 15% per annum using this saving method. Dash Reserve gave users 3.5% per annum interest on app deposits monthly, no strings attached. Users could also cancel, withdraw and lock their savings at any time. Dash Pots had no withdrawal and deposit fees. You could save with friends and family as well.

Users were able to get rewards whenever they transact. One could redeem rewards anytime when they reached a threshold. You could redeem airtime, data bundles, KPLC tokens and more. The app also had monthly expense reports, where users could see where their money went to with a full visual breakdown of their expenses. With a customer support line, users could contact them when they want a refund or have an issue.

Saving on Dash also gave higher returns than that of Money Market funds and T-Bills/Fixed deposits from banks. In summary, Dash had built a great infrastructure and exciting features and were launching micro-insurance and micro investments in both local and international stocks before they went burst. Had it not been for the founders alleged financial impropriety, Dash had a big future in Africa.

Prince has had a long history in the African startup scene and could have been used to starting ventures for his personal gains. In  April 11, 2014 his startup BiGxGh.com then touted as Ghana’s number one music website, was part of Savannah Fund’s third accelerator class with Nigeria’s UniSmart and Kenya’s Zevan. BiGxGh.com, co-founded with Jesse Ahin Ghansah and Prince and it aimed at empowering Ghanaian musicians by providing them with a platform to display their art to Ghana music fans worldwide. BiGxGh.com had become the go-to online destination for Ghana music related content and a promotional powerhouse for both established and up-and-coming artists. In 2013, the site had over 20 million site views. The most downloaded song on the website has over 523,000 downloads. BiGxGh.com had been able to accumulate one of the largest communities of Ghana music enthusiasts on the Internet and serves as a direct-link between artists and their fans. At one point, Google Ghana ranked “BiGxGhTV” as one of “Top 4 YouTube Channels in Ghana.”

Prince Boakye Boampong’s BiGxGh.com was also part of the 18 startups at Seed Stars World (SSW) Nairobi. Later in the same year, Bigxgh.com was re-launched as Bigx.com.gh in a move to make it simple for fans to discover and share music online with just a click of a button. The relaunch was to allow lovers of authentic Ghanaian music worldwide to create personalized playlists easily, chat with their friends in real-time and as well curate the playlists they want. Users can also listen to uninterrupted music, enjoy the latest gossip, watch videos, read the news and much more.

“We have built the first music-streaming platform for Ghanaian music. So just click PLAY to start listening to your favorite Ghanaian tunes without hassle. Anytime, anywhere,” said Prince Boakye Boampong and Dominic Mensah who co-founded the streaming service.

After Bigxgh.com, Prince and Jesse co-founded OMG Voice which at one time was touted as Africa’s Buzzfeed before its closure due to alleged misappropriation of funds. However, his co-founder Jesse Ghansah went on to start Float, a Ghanaian fintech startup which acquired Accounteer, a Nigerian cloud-based accounting service that combines bookkeeping, tax prep, and financial advisory services all in one platform, for an undisclosed amount. Jesse Ghansah’s Float also went on to raise US$17 million in debt and equity seed funding to accelerate its development and launch additional products. 

Earlier, Float received US$6 million in credit spend and cash advances for businesses, and its payment transaction volume has increased 26 times as more customers utilize Float to manage both local and international business payments.

In February this year, Prince Boakye Boampong was suspended as Dash’s CEO after internal audits revealed exaggerated user numbers and misappropriation of company funds and a humongous CEO monthly salary of up to $50,000 when the firm had no tangible revenues. Kenya’s Kenneth Kinyua, who had joined the firm from Kopo Kopo, was made the interim CEO. Kinyua would later find that Dash had a monthly burn rate of over $500,000 and at least $25 million missing and unaccounted for leading to its shutdown.

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