Chipper Cash, an African cross-border payments platform, conducted a fresh round of layoffs last Friday after ten weeks of laying off staff.
This layoff came after the fintech laid off approximately 12.5% of its workforce which affected the engineering team the most.
The company’s V.P. of revenue shared the news on LinkedIn, saying “all areas” across Chipper Cash’s markets were impacted 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 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.” He said
Over 100 people, or almost one-third of Chipper Cash’s employment, were let go, according to a number of local media publications. The precise number of roles impacted was not confirmed by Chipper Cash.
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 to TechCrunch.
“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.”
“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 debunking the report that Chipper Cash has shut down its crypto department, which houses crypto products, FX, and airtime.
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.
Chipper Cash joins a litany of crypto firms and businesses, with an emphasis on Africa, that have recently let go of staff members. This list already includes Jumia, which has laid off 900 employees.
