Kippa - Afrikan Heroes

Nigeria’s Kippa Launches New Digital Payments Product for African SMEs

April 13, 2022

The Nigerian fintech startup Kippa, which offers digital business and financial management solutions for SMEs in Africa, has launched its second product Kippa Payments, a digital payments solution enabling users to send and receive payments from customers and perform extended payments transactions automatically.

Launched in June 2021 by brothers Kennedy Ekezie and Duke Ekezie together with Jephtah Chidozie-Uche, Kippa has developed an app that helps merchants to increase cash flow by recovering debts.

Kippa’s first product is a simple-to-use, mobile bookkeeping solution used by over 350,000 SMEs in Nigeria. Using the app, small business owners can keep track of debtors and send automated debt reminders.

The startup last November announced a US$3.2 million pre-seed funding round led by Target Global, and it has now launched its second product – Kippa Payments. Available to access within the existing Kippa app, Kippa Payments allows customers to send transfers and payments for bills, as well as invoices with embedded payment links. The new product can automatically detect, record, synchronise and therefore validate users’ business data, which was previously self-recorded by merchants on the app.

“We are very proud to be launching our new digital payments solution today, which comes at a key time for Nigeria’s fintech sector, as demand from SMEs for digital payments solutions continues to rise,” Chidozie-Uche said. “Kippa Payments will also enable us to have a deeper understanding of our customers through transactional data, so that we can offer more tailored and bespoke products over time, unlocking deeper value within the Kippa ecosystem alongside our existing solutions.”

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

Nigerian Finance Management Startup Kippa Secures $3.2M Pre-seed, After A Major Pivot

November 18, 2021

Kippa, a Nigerian startup that uses its finance management app to try to enhance the life cycle of small enterprises, has received $3.2 million in pre-seed investment.

Target Global, a Berlin-based venture capital firm, led the startup’s fresh funding round. The other VCs who took part are Entrée Capital, Alter Global, and Rally Cap Ventures. Babs Ogundeyi, Kuda CEO; Sriram Krishnan, a Khatabook investor; Raffael Johnen, Auxmoney CEO; Chris Bouwer; Kyane Kassiri; Edward Suh of Goodwater Capital; and Sajid Rahman were among the angel investors that invested in the firm.

“What we saw was a lot of them (small businesses) operating very manually using the ledgers, spending one hour or more at the end of the day balancing their books, making mistakes, cancelling out, complaining of their records being incomplete,” said co-founder and CEO Kennedy Ekezie.

“And we saw a bigger problem — which is the biggest problem small businesses face — the lack of access to credit or financing to run properly. So we thought that was an interesting enough problem to solve.”

Kippa’s pre-seed round, which is one of the largest in Nigeria and Sub-Saharan Africa, will be used to expand the company’s merchant network, improve its product, scale the team, and enter the financial services market.

Why The Investors Invested

The startup’s traction has been critical in securing this current round of funding; the bookkeeping and finance software claims to have grown at a monthly rate of 126 percent since debuting in June. Kippa claims to have logged over $300 million in sales in the last five months, with over 130,000 active companies ranging from small kiosks and street corner shops to local food vendors and high-end retailers utilizing the app.

These data imply a strong demand for the product in the Nigerian market, according to principal investor Target Global, which is why it invested.

“Our investment in Kippa will enable it to grow and be the first-choice financial management solution for small businesses in Africa,” said Lina Chong, the firm’s investment director.

A Look At What Kippa Does

Kippa was founded in February 2021 by Ekezie and his co-founders Duke Ekezie and Jephthah Uche. Prior to Kippa, the three co-founded Africave, a software talent matchmaking website that closed down last year.

Kippa is a simple tool that allows small business owners to keep track of their daily income and spending transactions, make invoices and receipts, manage inventory, and see how their businesses fluctuate over time.

According to the business, one of the most essential aspects of the software is that it assists merchants in keeping track of debtors and sending automated reminders to them. Merchants who utilize Kippa in this fashion, according to the business, “recover debts 3x faster.”

Kippa differs from other existing solutions, according to CEO Ekezie, because the company is “choosing to be digitally native, rather than pursuing the digitization of analogue processes as past players have done.” According to the founder, this distinguishes the company.

Kippa is now free to use for businesses, but with the addition of credit and other financial services, the company will be able to generate money by charging commission fees or interest on lending or working capital.

Kippa finance management Kippa finance management

Togolese Super App, Gozem, Expands To Cameroon, To Offer Fintech And Ecommerce Services

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning write