African fintech startup Chipper Cash, in a continuing trend, has once again downsized its workforce, as the company undergoes its fourth successive round of layoffs in a year.
The layoffs are a result of the recent minor restructuring ongoing at the company. Announcing via a statement, Chipper Cash disclosed that only a small number of roles were impacted by the minor restructuring, which saw 15 employees laid off.
The company wrote,
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“We constantly look to ensure we have as much efficiency as possible within our global organization, and only a small number of roles were impacted by the minor restructuring. No roles in Africa were affected this year, we have expanded teams on the continent. Our business is doing very well and will be profitable in a few months”.
Beyond the layoffs, Chipper Cash also slashed the salaries of its remaining US and UK employees, people close to the company disclosed.
Starting from 2022, Chipper Cash has so far laid off a significant part of its workforce, after the company attributed it to a shift in focus towards core markets and products, amid a challenging macroeconomic climate.
The company’s first round of layoffs came after its leading investor, FTX shut down operations. Due to the incident, Chipper Cash saw its valuation slashed from $2bn to $1.25bn before the FTX bankruptcy, according to documents shared by the Financial Times on the 6th of December 2022.
The company was also impacted by another similar incident that saw another of its lead investors, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) shut down. According to Bloomberg’s report, the unicorn was weighing options, which included exploring a sale or seeking new investors.
Meanwhile, the company later disclosed that it never sought to be acquired, after the CEO and Co-founder Ham Serunjogi said that the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which was one of its investors, only had insignificant exposure on the company.
He said,
“Given the scale and complexity of our global operations, Chipper Cash maintains multiple banking relationships across the world, including multiple within the United States. As such, we had a very limited amount of money (only about $1M) held in our SVB account at the time the bank was taken over by the California regulator”.
Founded in 2018 by Ham Serunjogi and Majeed Moujaled, with the vision to unlock global opportunities and connect Africa to the rest of the world, Chipper Cash operates in multiple African markets with a core presence in Nigeria, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, and Ghana.
The fintech startup enables its users to transfer money across borders in Africa as easily as sending a text. In 2021, it introduced fractional investing in US stocks for all its users as well as crypto trading.
The Chipper on-chain cryptocurrency wallet supports BTC, ETH, SOL, and many more. From it, users can buy and sell, send, and receive crypto. Almost two million transactions took place in 2022, with each user averaging a total of 11.5 transactions per month.
Since its launch, Chipper Cash has raised over $300 million in venture funding across multiple rounds that originally valued it at $2.2 billion in late 2021.