Chipper Cash strengthens partnership with Visa

Mobile financial services company Chipper Cash has announced an expanded strategic partnership with payments giant Visa to drive growth and financial inclusion across the African continent.

Chipper Cash has already been working with Visa since 2021 to bring the Chipper Card to market, where Chipper customers use the Visa network to make payments globally.

"Having recently issued one million cards and become the largest provider of virtual cards in Africa, this expanded deal will see Chipper harness Visa's vast experience and investment across more areas of its business," Chipper Cash said in a statement.

The arrangement will see the two continuing to collaborate on card issuance, while also joining forces across regulatory and functional areas such as Visa licensing and marketing.

"Today's announcement means we can deliver on our priorities at a faster pace than we could do alone; harnessing Visa's global reach to enable us to continue to bring the very best products and services to customers," said Brett Magrath, Chipper Cash chief product officer, about the partnership.

Meagan Rabe, senior director of Fintechs for Visa sub-Saharan Africa, added that the partnership deepens Visa's support in the growing demand for digital financial services in Africa and hopes to drive meaningful impact across the continent.

In December 2022, Visa pledged to invest $1 billion in Africa over five years to scale its operations, deploy new innovative technologies and deepen collaboration with African partners including fintechs.

Growing its reach

Chipper Cash has over 5 million customers across Africa and the US. It operates in a number of markets across Africa including Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria and South Africa.

Chipper Cash was founded by Ugandan Ham Serunjogi and Ghanaian Maijid Moujaled in 2018 as a way to "chip away" at the problem of inaccessible financial services, a high population of underbanked consumers, reliance on hard money for daily commerce and the difficulty of cross-border transactions.

Chipper Cash has over 5 million customers across Africa and the US. (Source: Chipper Cash)

Tefiro Serunjogi, head of consumer products at Chipper Cash, said that the company's data shows that for 21% of its customers getting a Chipper Card, it is their first time accessing a payment card.

Serunjogi said the Visa partnership allows Chipper Cash to not only scale its card program "but to do even more to drive financial inclusivity to millions".

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The announcement of the strategic partnership with Visa comes two months after Chipper announced the launch of Chipper ID, an artificial intelligence-driven verification and onboarding tool built specifically for the African continent.

In November 2022, the company announced plans to acquire Zambian fintech company Zoona Transactions International.

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*Top image is of Tefiro Serunjogi, Chipper Cash head of consumer products; and Brett Magrath, Chipper Cash chief product officer. (Source: Chipper Cash)

— The Staff, Connecting Africa