Chipper Cash and the SADC remittance opportunity

In late November 2022, Chipper Cash announced they would be acquiring Zambian Fintech service provider Zoona, signalling Chipper Cash’s intention to expand into the SADC region. Laura Kennedy, Chipper’s VP of Corporate Development at the time mentioned that the deal would accelerate the startup’s expansion across the continent and be used in product development.

2023 has been a quieter year on the expansion front for Chipper which gives us time to explore the Zoona acquisition along with what Chipper’s further involvement in the SADC remittance market could look like, the challenges they’ll face on the way and the size of the market they are entering…

Chipper Cash history

Chipper Cash founders, Ham Serunjogi and Maijid Moujaled believed there was a fortune to be made bringing transnational financial services to Africa's people. Sending money between countries was extremely difficult and banking systems were very underdeveloped. The two met at Grinnell College in Iowa and came up with the idea for a money transfer app there, but wanted to acquire experience working in the tech industry first.

In the spring of 2018, Serunjogi texted Moujaled, who was working as a software engineer in San Francisco, to say it was time to get going… They launched a test version of their app in July 2018, letting customers send money from Uganda to Ghana for free. The cofounders took pitches to more than 50 VC firms until, in November 2018, 500 Startups agreed to invest $150,000.