Financial management, and payment solutions company, Kippa, has announced the completion of its $8.4 million financing round.
The round had participations from 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.
Leveraging on the increased number of Africans with access to internet connections, and electronic devices, Kippa has developed products that provides digital financial solutions to small and medium scale enterprises (SME)
Founded in 2021 by Kennedy Ekezie-Joseph, Duke Ekezie, and Jephthah Uche, Kippa aims at solving the problems encountered by SMEs in areas around money management, inventory and record keeping, staff data, and suppliers information, etc.
“We expect the number of digitally active small businesses to grow exponentially over the next three to five years. As more small businesses come online, Kippa will own the money button on the devices of these merchants,” Kennedy Ekezie-Joseph, Kippa CEO, said.
Kippa started as a finance management app – where small business owners can keep track of their daily income and expense, create invoices and receipts, manage inventory and monitor the growth of their business.
However, with the newly raised funds, the company will go ahead to develop more financial products that help its target establishments further grow their businesses. The company also said it will expend the funds towards growing its team in Nigeria.
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Last week, Kippa announced that it has been licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to operate as a super agent, a license also owned by industry competitions like Opay and TeamApt. With the license, Kippa said its users will be able to render financial services such as cash withdrawals and deposits, bank account opening, bills and utility payments, etc.
“We have over 500,000 merchants on our app and there’s a lot of opportunities for us to do more for them and provide more financial services. The super agent license allows merchants and typical neighborhood shops who already use our bookkeeping app into a one-stop-shop for essential financial services for their customers,” Kippa CEO said.
In November, 2021, Kippa closed its $3.2 million fund raising round, which had participations from Berlin-based VC Target Global. Entrée Capital, Alter Global and Rally Cap Ventures, and a host of angel investors.
Kippa has now raised $11 million within the last year, and has made processed transactions of over $3 billion – which is ten times the amount processed at the time of its pre-seed round last November.