Nigeria’s Kippa Raises $8.4 Million In Seed Funding Not Too Long After Receiving Its Super Banking License From The CBN

Last week the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) issued fintech startup Africave Technologies Limited DBA Kippa a Payment Solutions Services License to operate as a “Super Agent,” empowering the startup with the ability to strengthen its network of merchants and offer them the infrastructure and tools they require to beagle to provide their customers with financial products and services. Speaking on the development, Kippa’s CEO Kennedy Ekezie-Joseph said that “We’ve done an incredible job acquiring and onboarding merchants from all nooks and crannies of Nigeria. We aim to further empower these merchants by providing them with the tools and infrastructure to provide financial services to their customers. This is already yielding results.” 

“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,” he added. Today, Kippa is on our radar for raising $8.4 million in an oversubscribed seed funding round.

Kippa’s $8.4 million seed round received investment from investors like Goodwater Capital, TEN13 VC, Rocketship VC, Saison Capital, Crestone VC, VentureSouq, Horizon Partners, and Vibe Capital. The latest round which comes on the heel of a $3.2 million November pre-seed round will allow Kippa to grow its team and develop financial products that’ll help SMEs grow their businesses.

Kippa was launched in June last year by Kennedy Ekezie-Joseph, Duke Ekezie, and Jephthah Uche. The startup portrays itself as an all-inclusive financial management platform for businesses. The startup has served more than 500,000 merchants within its network and records a yearly transaction value of more than $3 billion and is popular for improving the lifecycle of small businesses across Nigeria via its financial management and payments platform. 

Kippa’s rivals include Pastel, OZE, Bumpa, Bamba, etc. Kippa’s solutions aid business to run their operations (managing money, inventory tracking, record keeping, etc.) efficiently and completely devoid of papers and ledgers, and errors. Kippa also helps businesses to save time associated with the exacting process. Kippa lets SMEs track their daily income and expenses, create invoices and receipts, and manage their inventory and their business flow over time.

Kippa currently has 130,000 active businesses in the range of kiosks and high-end merchants, according to CEO Kennedy Ekezie-Joseph. One of the startup’s strong points is its presence all over Nigeria’s 36 states thanks to its merchant network.