Nigerian Fintech company, Kippa,has announced the shutting down of its offline payment product, KippaPay. Sources say that the startup will also lay off about 40 members of its staff as a result of the shutdown.
Founder and CEO of Kippa, Kennedy Ekezie, made the announcement via a blogpost. Ekezie said:
“Today, we announce that we’re pulling back our offline payments product: KippaPay from the market. Over the past 18 months, we launched and grew this arm of our product suite to support merchants with offline payments and agency banking through our POS terminals.“
Hinting on the layoffs in the post, the CEO said it is a difficult decision for the company considering the impactful work the product’s team had done. The team, he said, will be leaving the company in December 2023.
“This company decision is related to profitable product portfolio consolidation. This decision unfortunately means that the core of our team supporting the KippaPay product will be leaving us in December 2023. This has been an incredibly difficult decision for us to make, but we are incredibly proud of the work this team has done, and the impact KippaPay has had on our merchants.“
Sources say layoff notices have been sent out to affected team members already.
The product KippaPay will cease to exist from the 15th of November 2023. Until then, the company will be helping their customers transition off the product.
“Starting November 15th, our KippaPay product will no longer be available for use by merchants. In the weeks leading up to this, we will provide support for our merchants and partners helping them transition off the product and resolve any pending settlements,” Ekezie said.
Kippa was founded in June 2021. It is a financial management and payments platform for Nigerian small businesses. The company secured $3.2 million pre-seed funding in November of the same year.
In September 2022, Kippa raised $8.4 million.
Participants were global investors, including Goodwater Capital, TEN13 VC, Rocketship VC, Saison Capital, and others. With the funds it launched into the highly contested agency banking sector after acquiring a super agent license.
With about 15,000 agents, Kippa still struggled with margins.
A Kippa spokesperson revealed this, saying, “The macroeconomic conditions in Nigeria, especially the devaluation of the naira, ate deeply into our margins, and our customers’ businesses have suffered over the past six months.”
KippaPay is a payment solution that enables users to send and receive payments from customers and perform extended payment transactions. It is one of the product arms of Kippa.
Other products include; KippaStart, which allows users to register their small businesses online for ₦20,000 ($26).
Kippa’s bookkeeping mobile app, which allows small business owners to keep track of their daily income and expense transactions. With the app, they issue invoices, provide receipts to their customers, and create marketing materials like business cards. It also keeps track of their debtors.
Reports however say the company will soon shutter Kippa Start too.
