A financial management and payments platform for small businesses in Nigeria, Kippa, has raised $8.4 million in its new financing round, making it a total of $11 million fundraiser.
With This recent fundraising, Kippa welcomes new global investors, like Goodwater Capital, TEN13 VC, Rocketship VC, Saison Capital (the venture arm of Credit Saison), Crestone VC (led by Inanc Balci, Co-founder and former CEO at Lazada), VentureSouq, Horizon Partners and Vibe Capital.
Kippa as a Finance Management App
Kippa started as a finance management app after it was launched in June 2021 by Kennedy Ekezie-Joseph, Duke Ekezie, and Jephthah Uche. Kippa as a finance management app helps small business owners keep track of their daily income and expense transactions. Also, it helps create invoices and receipts, manage inventory, and generally monitor the business’s performance over time.
In November 2021, the company’s pre-seed fundraising was $3.2 million which was received from Target Global and other investors. Similar to other financial companies like OZÉ, Bumpa, and Prospa, Kippa aims at 50 million SMEs in Nigeria and a larger market across sub-Saharan Africa.
Kippa Obtain License From CBN
Recently, the company has obtained a Super-Agent license from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), just like other banking agent players, OPay and TeamApt.
Speaking with Ekezie-Joseph, he explained the importance of why the company obtained the license. He said, “the license allows us to empower all our customers with tools, and infrastructure to not just accept payments, but to start to offer financial services to their end customers.”
Not stopping there, he further said the license allowed Kippa to implement integration with the national switches and allows it to provide business-to-business platforms and services to other fintech.
The Importance of the License to Kippa’s Merchant
The license permits merchants on Kippa to act as agents and offer financial services such as cash withdrawals and deposits, bank account opening, bills and utility payments, and insurance to individual customers who come to their shop for regular purchases.
In the past years, Kippa has recruited ex-regulators and former senior executives at top fintech startups including OPay, BharatPe, Khatabook, TeamApt, OKCredit, NIBSS, and Unified Payments, amongst others.
Ekezie-Joseph said the company’s mission is to ensure convenience for start-ups and to run profitable small businesses in Africa. This birthed the reason why Kippa is building a full suite of software and financial services that enables this ambition, thereby empowering African business owners.
