Chipper Cash Conducts Second Round Of Layoffs, Engineering Team Affected

A second round of layoffs by African cross-border payments provider Chipper Cash was made over the weekend just 10 weeks after it reduced its personnel by about 12.5% (affecting its engineering team the most).

On LinkedIn, the company's vice president of revenue announced the news and stated that "all sectors" of Chipper Cash's marketplaces were affected at this time.

“Friday was a sad day for Chipper Cash, as many talented people were let go,” his post reads.

“For my network: there is an incredibly talented pool of individuals across the U.S., U.K., South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, and more.

"They are all highly experienced in managing very complex, multicultural teams and projects in fintech. All areas have been impacted, from Recruiting, HR, Marketing, Pricing, Product, Analytics, UX, Research, Legal, and more.”

Over 100 people, or almost one-third of Chipper Cash's employment, were let go, according to a number of local media publications.

Chipper Cash declined to confirm the precise number of roles impacted but stated that the stories are generally correct.

In order to reduce expenses amid a rough time for private and public digital companies globally, the five-year-old payments and cryptocurrency startup has therefore let go of roughly 150 people in the previous three months in addition to the initial round of layoffs.

“The last two years were a period of rapid growth and scaling for us as a business and, to reflect this, our global headcount grew by around 250 people,” said CEO Ham Serunjogi in a statement.

“However, given the macroeconomic climate, we are narrowing our current focus to core markets and products – concentrating our efforts where we know we can thrive.

"With this hyper-focused prioritization, the reality is that we, unfortunately, need a smaller team at Chipper.”

Moreover, Quick Cash refuted claims that it had closed its cryptocurrency division, which holds one of its three primary products—along with FX and airtime—crypto goods.

"Chipper is still one of our products with the quickest rate of growth, and it is currently one of the biggest crypto platforms in Africa.

"We continue to invest in the product because we are enthusiastic about the potential of cryptocurrencies in Africa, Serunjogi said.

Serunjogi and Maijid Moujaled established Chipper Cash in 2018 to offer Africans a no-fee peer-to-peer cross-border payment service.

The startup, sponsored by FTX, claims to have over 5 million customers in Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa, and Kenya.

More recently, the company has extended to the U.S. and the United Kingdom, enabling peer-to-peer money transfers from both nations to specific locations in Africa.

The African cross-border payment app revealed in November of last year that it will buy the Southern African fintech startup Zoona from Zambia.

And the month after that, in the wake of FTX's bankruptcy, we revealed that the African fintech had its valuation reduced from $2 billion to $1.25 billion in accordance with documents revealing Alameda's venture capital portfolio.

The African fintech had raised over $300 million from investors such as the now-defunct crypto exchange, SVB Capital, and Ribbit Capital.

Chipper Cash joins a litany of crypto firms and businesses with an emphasis on Africa that has recently let go of staff members.

This list already includes Jumia (900 employees), Yoco (15% of its employment, according to sources), and Luno (35% of its workforce).