Chipper Cash makes second round of layoffs less than three months after cutting 12.5% ​​of employees • TechCrunch

Image credit: Chipper Cash

African cross-border payments platform Chipper Cash carried out a second round of layoffs last Friday, just ten weeks after it cut roughly 12.5% ​​of its workforce (impacting the engineering team the most).

The company’s director of revenue shared the news on LinkedIn, saying that “all areas” across Chipper Cash’s markets were affected this time. “Friday was a sad day for Chipper Cash as many talented people were let go,” his post read. “For my network: there is an incredibly talented group of individuals across the US, UK, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and more. They are all highly experienced in leading highly complex, multicultural teams and projects in fintech. All areas have been impacted, from recruiting, HR, marketing, pricing, product, analytics, user experience, research, legal and more.”

According to several local outlets, Chipper Cash replaced almost a third of its workforce, around 100 employees. Chipper Cash did not confirm the exact number of roles affected when contacted by TechCrunch, but said the reports are relatively accurate. In addition to the first round of layoffs, the five-year-old payments and crypto startup has let go of over 150 employees over the past three months to cut costs amid a turbulent period for private and public tech companies globally.

“The past two years have been a period of rapid growth and scaling for us as a business, and to reflect this, our global headcount has grown by around 250 people,” CEO Ham Serunjogi said in a statement to TechCrunch. “However, given the macroeconomic climate, we are narrowing our current focus to core markets and products – and 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.

Chipper Cash also denied reports that it was shutting down its crypto division, which houses crypto products, one of its three main offerings, including currency and airtime. “Chipper is one of the largest crypto platforms in Africa today and it remains one of our fastest growing products. We are excited about the future of crypto in Africa and continue to invest in the product,” Serunjogi added.

Serunjogi co-founded Chipper Cash in 2018 with Maijid Moujaled to provide Africans with a free peer-to-peer cross-border payment service. The company says it has over 5 million customers across Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa and Kenya – and more recently, the US and UK, where the FTX-backed startup expanded last year to facilitate peer-to-peer -peer money movement from both countries to selected regions in Africa.

Last November, the African cross-border payments app announced it would acquire Zambian fintech company Zoona to expand into South Africa. And the following month, in the wake of FTX’s bankruptcy, we reported that the African fintech, which has raised over $300 million from investors including defunct crypto exchange SVB Capital and Ribbit Capital, saw its valuation slashed from $2 billion to $1, $25 billion, according to documents showing Alameda’s venture capital portfolio.

Chipper Cash adds to a list of Africa-focused companies and crypto companies that have laid off employees in recent months, including Jumia (900 employees), Yoco (15% of its workforce, according to sources) and Luno (35% of its workforce). workforce).