Billionaire Bezos Backs Start-Up in Maiden Africa Investment

Bella Genga, Bloomberg News

Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive officer of Amazon.com Inc., speaks during a discussion at the Air Force Association's Air, Space and Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, U.S., on Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2018. Amazon is considering a plan to open as many as 3,000 new AmazonGo cashierless stores in the next few years, according to people familiar with matter, an aggressive and costly expansion that would threaten convenience chains. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Jeff Bezos agreed to back Africa-focused financial technology company, Chipper Cash, making it his first start-up investment on the continent.

The world’s richest man’s personal venture capital fund, Bezos Expeditions, supported the Series B funding led by Ribbit Capital, which raised $30 million for the San Fransisco-based company.

“Jeff Bezo’s backing of Chipper Cash will widen the company’s product suite through inclusion of more business payment solutions, crypto-currency trading options, and investment services,” the company said in an emailed statement.

Chipper Cash enables instant cross-border mobile money transfers in Africa and abroad and will use the funds for expansion into countries it will announce in 2021. The company has 3 million users on its platform across Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Nigeria and South Africa, and processes an average of 80,000 transactions daily, according to the statement.

“We are responding to the demand from customers on our P2P platform who also have business enterprises,” Chipper Cash Chief Executive Officer Ham Serunjogi said in the statement.

Read more: Visa Partners With Payments Startup Chipper in African Expansion