The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has issued Africave Technologies Limited DBA Kippa, the financial management and payments platform, a Payment Solutions Services Licence to Operate as a super-agent.
With this approval, Kippa will build its network of merchants, providing them with the infrastructure and tools to offer financial products and services to their customers.
Leveraging its strong merchant distribution across all 36 states of Nigeria, Kippa merchants can now accept offline payments from customers and, more importantly, increase customer footfall, customer retention and business revenue by offering financial products and services on Kippa’s infrastructure.
The most recent report by Enhancing Financial Innovation & Access (EFInA) shows that around 49.3 million business owners are spread across the country, mostly comprised of micro-entrepreneurs mainly driven by service and trade.
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Kippa’s license issuance comes off the back of its recent appointment of Niyi Ajao, former Deputy Managing Director at the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), as Chairman, and Oluwatoyin Albert as Executive Director for Payment Services.
“We’ve done an incredible job acquiring and onboarding merchants from all nooks and crannies of Nigeria. We aim to further empower these merchants by providing them with the tools and infrastructure to provide financial services to their customers. This is already yielding results”, Kennedy Ekezie-Joseph, CEO of Kippa, explains.
Looking at our counterparty data, merchants activated on KippaPay are in the 90th percentile of Kippa merchants regarding customer retention: so, they have more customers, and a higher number of transactions per customer,” Ekezie-Joseph adds.
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“We are excited to offer further financial services to our merchants, which align with the CBN’s broader financial inclusion strategy. We are fully aware of the existing regulatory framework and requirements and will continue to drive our initiatives to millions of Nigerians while engaging all stakeholders concerned”, Toyin Albert, Executive Director, Payment Services, says.
Kippa launched in June 2021 as an all-inclusive financial management platform for businesses. The company has served over 500,000 merchants within its network, recording annualised transaction value of over $3 billion.
