Payhippo, a Nigerian-based lending startup has announced its raise of $3million in a seed round led by an array of angel investors including, Ham Serunjogi and Maijid Moujaled, co-founders of Chipper Cash, Olugbenga Agboola of Flutterwave; Bolaji Balogun, the CEO of investment banking firm Chapel Hill Denham; and Hakeem Belo-Osagie, the founder of Metis Capital Partners. Meanwhile, other angel investors include Paystack, Brex, and Tala and, several LPs from Payhippo precede investors. Institutional investors include TEN13, VentureSouq, and Prodigio Capital. The funding would be targeted at sourcing highly needed talent and improving the start-up technology.

“We had seen that traditional banks and lenders would not loan small businesses mainly because there were no credit scores, or the collateral requirements were too high”, said co-founder Chioma Okotcha. They decided to come into the market and create an instant financing option, where they create a credit score that allows small businesses to get the liquidity they need to buy inventory for business continuity. It makes use of data from historical records that borrowers have built with us. We also check their banking history to see the actual performance of their businesses.
Objectives and Aims
Ham Serunjogi, Cofounder and CEO of Chipper Cash, said: “New financial technologies arises in development; thereby changing the competitive landscape in the financial sector in Africa. Access to credit is a critical necessity for small businesses to manage their daily challenges. Payhippo helps address this need through its innovative approach that provides loans to small businesses in less than three hours. It enables them to have access to sufficient working capital to grow.”
In 2019, Uche Nnadi, Chioma Okotcha and Zach Bijesse established PayHippo. The startup, which is part of the 2021 Y Combinator summer cohort, had previously raised $1m in pre-seed funding earlier this year. Payhippo provides small businesses with short-term working capital with average loan amounts of $1300 and allows them to use the principal amount during the entire tenor, using the money to run their businesses entirely. The startup has been experiencing a 25% monthly growth with a 97% loan repayment rate.