ChipperCash is a Diaspora Payments Network for Africa

Diaspora networks can grow really fast because of mobile identity and reach. Chipper cash is an example.

Africans live all over the world, and inevitably have to send money to each other across borders. Initially within Africa, say between a user in Uganda sending shillings and picked up by a user in Nigeria taking out Naira, but remittances can happen between African diaspora and residents anywhere in the world (including from corridors like the UK). Chipper cash is a Venmo like product, seeded amongst African users initially to serve cross border money remittances on the mobile phone instantly and for free. the company was also built and funded in the US and run remotely with local teams in each geography.

To send money across Africa used to involve going to an agent, at a kiosk, negotiating a rate and then sending money, before collecting it offline or by getting an mobile top up via the MTN network. Chipper makes it all fade away and eliminates the cost, which founder Ham Serunjohi was motivated to solve “The cost of sending money in Africa is the highest in the world”.

Fragmented currencies, remittance methods (like mobile top ups or local banks), and phone numbers as unique identity are all infrastructure that enables the company but equally enables other services like Transferwise or Remitly who have all these corridors but these products just were utilizing the money transfer graph, and not the mobile identity graph.

With Africans being connected via smartphones and Whatsapp groups, the diaspora angle is the key differentiator, because once you can capture the global user graph and build transactions between users, the company can easily layer more and more money making services to offset the costs of sending money for free (like Crypto trading), and becoming a fully fledged wallet while retaining those cross border social ties to drive long term loyalty and making it easier to acquire more users in the diaspora extended network. By being tailored to Africans across the globe this is a large demographic to capture that “flavorless” money transfer services don’t capture at all. I can see Diaspora network products working for other demographics like Non resident Indians who have large global reach and are for the taking.

Here’s a great interview with the Chippercash founder on his motivation to start the company: