Chipper Cash Raises $150 Million In Latest Funding Round
Chipper Cash, an African cross-border payments company, has raised $150 million in a Series C extension round. The investment round was led by Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency exchange platform FTX.
The latest investment round comes roughly six months after the African fintech company closed its first Series C round of $100 million, led by SVB Capital, the corporate venture capital arm of SVB Financial Group.
Chipper Cash provides peer-to-peer cash transfers to numerous African countries, including Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana and Tanzania. The fintech company has also started expanding its services to Europe in a bid to make it easier for Africans living there to send money home.
As part of the partnership, FTX users in the continent will soon be able to use Chipper Cash on the FTX trading platform. This latest development will allow FTX to gain a foothold in the African cryptocurrency space, which is dominated by other leading crypto exchanges such as Binance, Luno and KuCoin.
Africa has become one of the leading continents in terms of cryptocurrency adoption. Nigeria, the continent’s largest economy, has the highest percentage of cryptocurrency adoption rate, with 24% of its population now involved in crypto in varying capacities.
The rising inflation levels in Nigeria and other African countries have forced the citizens to look for ways to store their wealth and diversify their earnings. According to a Chainalysis report two months ago, Africa’s crypto market grew by over $105 billion between June 2020 and July 2021. Cryptocurrencies now offer a viable channel for improving remittance flows in the continent.