African Fintech Chipper Cash, valued at US$1-billion, has expanded to South Africa, where it has started offering domestic money transfers, cryptocurrency investments as well as airtime and data purchases through its mobile application.

Chipper Cash is one of only a few African tech start-ups - including Flutterwave, Interswitch and OPay - valued at over US$1-billion and also known as unicorns.

It recently raised US$100-million from a Series C capital raise and already operates in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.

Regarding its South African interests, Pardon Mujakachi, Vice President: Strategy & Partnerships, Africa at Chipper Cash said more than R157-billion is moved around South Africa’s provinces every year, “with people sending money” to their families and friends. Overall 24 million South Africans send money to each other daily.

“Domestic remittances are a lifeline for many families in South Africa. Chipper Cash’s free, fast and easy domestic P2P service is now available to them all,” said Mujakachi who added: “We believe it gives South Africans the freedom to instantly send money anywhere in the country from their mobile phones.”

The Chipper Cash mobile application is aimed at boosting access to easy and efficient money transfer services for Africans and “to increase access to financial services for the underbanked and digitising daily payments to ease the reliance” on cash.

Embedded into the new South African service platform are instant airtime and data purchases from South African network providers.

Additionally, the new platform supports trade in cryptocurrency as it allows South Africans “to buy, sell and transfer Bitcoin, Etherium and USD Coin” via the application. South Africa has already published a regulatory sandbox for trade in cryptocurrency, a development that has attracted crypto trading platforms and also unlocked crypto remittance platforms to countries such as Ghana.

The company is now working on introducing additional features such as cross-border transfers across countries within our network, Mujakachi added.