Nigeria’s lending startup Payhippo has raised $3 million in a seed round, funding the company plans to use in sourcing the talent needed to optimize its technology as it ramps up effort to extend speedy credit to more small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the West African country.
Angel investors who took part in the round included Ham Serunjogi and Maijid Moujaled, the co-founders of Chipper Cash; Olugbenga Agboola, CEO and co-founder of Flutterwave; Bolaji Balogun, the CEO of Chapel Hill Denham; and Hakeem Belo-Osagie, the founder of Metis Capital Partners.
The YCombinator-backed Fintech leverages artificial intelligence to identify creditworthy SMEs across the continent. Chioma Okotcha, COO; Zach Bijesse, CEO; and Uche Nnadi, CTO; founded the company along side a team of innovators and builders with domain expertise in the lending space.
The company has a mission to bridge financial gaps between 40 million small and medium-sized business owners, and business capital needed for growth. Payhippo’s automated underwriting and credit assessment tools enable its decentralised financial distribution.
Payhippo’s SME Financing Solution includes Banking Data Analysis, Real-time Disbursal and Growth Acceleration. According to the company, it disburses short-term working capital and has a relatively high frequency of business transactions.
Asserting to have over 450 active SMEs leveraging its platform and disbursed over ₦1,000,000,000, the company’s investors and partners include PiggVest, Aidi Ventures, Max.ng and Wallets.Africa.