Africa’s cross-border payments platform Chipper Cash announced its second round of job cuts last Friday, just 10 weeks after cutting about 12.5% of its workforce (with engineering being the hardest hit). team).
The company’s vice president of revenue shared the news on LinkedIn, saying that “every sector” of Chipper Cash’s overall market was affected this time. “Friday was a sad day for Chipper Cash as so many talented people got fired,” his post read. “My network has an incredibly talented pool of individuals in the US, UK, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and beyond. We have extensive experience in managing .All areas are impacted: recruiting, HR, marketing, pricing, product, analytics, UX, research, and legal.”
Chipper Cash laid off nearly a third of its workforce, about 100 employees, according to some local stores. Chipper Cash did not confirm the exact number of roles affected when contacted by TechCrunch, but said the report was relatively accurate. The five-year-old payments and cryptocurrency startup laid off more than 150 employees in the past three months to cut costs during a tough time for private and public tech companies around the world.
CEO Ham Serunjogi said in a statement to TechCrunch, “The past two years have been a period of rapid growth and scaling for us as a business, reflecting an increase in our global headcount of approximately 250 people. “However, given the macroeconomic conditions, we have narrowed our current focus to our core markets and products, and are concentrating our efforts on areas where we know we can succeed. Unfortunately, the reality is that Chipper requires a smaller team.”
Chipper Cash has also denied reports that it has closed its crypto division, which handles crypto products, one of its three main products, including FX and airtime. “Chipper is one of the largest crypto platforms and one of the fastest growing products in Africa today. continue to do so,” added Serunjogi.
Serunjogi founded Chipper Cash with Maijid Moujaled in 2018 to provide free peer-to-peer cross-border payment services to Africans. The company says he has more than 5 million customers in Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa and Kenya, most recently in the United States and the United Kingdom, where the FTX-backed startup expanded last year to facilitate peer-to-peer communication. also has customers. Movement of money from both countries to selected areas of Africa.
Last November, the African cross-border payments app announced it would expand into Southern Africa with the acquisition of Zambian fintech company Zoona. And the following month, in the wake of FTX’s bankruptcy, we announced that the African fintech that had raised over $300 million from investors, including defunct crypto exchanges SVB Capital and Ribbit Capital, had a valuation of his 20. From $100 million he reported plummeting to $1.25 billion. According to documents showing Alameda’s venture capital portfolio.
Chippercash has focused on Africa, which has laid off workers in recent months, including Jumia (900 employees), Yoco (15% of employees, according to sources) and Luno (35% of employees). It will be added to the list of winning companies and cryptocurrency companies. Labor force).
