Chipper Cash was founded in 2018 by Ham Serunjogi (from Uganda) and Maijid Moujaled (from Ghana), both based in the US at the time. The company launched with a bold proposition: free, instant, cross-border money transfers across Africa.
Sending money between African countries has traditionally been expensive and slow — fees of 8-10% were common, and transfers could take days. Chipper Cash eliminated the fees for person-to-person transfers and made the process near-instant. The app handles the currency conversion in the background.
Chipper Cash operates in Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and South Africa. The app supports person-to-person payments, airtime purchases, bill payments, and business payment tools for merchants. In 2021, Chipper Cash also added stock trading (US stocks) and cryptocurrency trading features for its users.
The company raised over $300 million in funding, with notable investors including Jeff Bezos (through Bezos Expeditions), Ribbit Capital, SVB Capital, and FTX (before its collapse). Chipper Cash was valued at around $2 billion at its peak in 2021.
Like many fintechs, Chipper Cash faced challenges as the funding environment tightened. The company laid off a significant portion of its staff in 2022-2023 and refocused on its core Africa payments business. It’s headquartered in San Francisco with offices in several African cities.
