TechNigeria: A weekly digest of what went down in Nigeria’s tech space

Chipper Cash, Payhippo and Google. These are some of the names that made the headlines this week.

Borderless payments company, Chipper Cash, raised a Series C extension round of over $150 million.

Payhippo, a lending startup, closed a US$3 million seed funding round to enhance its technology as it looks to support small businesses in Nigeria.

A review of Realme 8i, a newly released smartphone that hit the market in September 2021, equally made the list for the week.

Let’s get into details.

A Nigerian career development startup is seeking to train young Nigerians to become developers.

Tech correspondent Ridwan Adelaja profiles TalentQL’s new initiative, AltSchool Africa, a programme where youngsters can earn a top-rated diploma in software engineering within a year.

Background checks into the company revealed that the startup was founded in 2020 by Adewale Yusuf, Opeyemi Awoyemi and Akintunde Sultan, as a venture hiring, developing and managing remote talent for global companies.

A Fintech player led the funding raiser table for the week with its $150 million raiser.

Our reporter noted that the new raiser took Chipper Cash’s valuation to over $2 billion.

Details on the raiser indicated that the round was led by Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency exchange platform, FTX, and is expected to help it continue offering value in the mobile payments market.

CBN seemed to have handed the future of banks to Fintechs and Telcos with the newly issued license to both MTN and Airtel to operate as Payment Service Banks (PSB) within Nigeria.

Business analyst Olalekan Fakoyejo wrote on how the development “doesn’t portend well for Nigerian banks.”

The implication of this is that these two telecoms firms will join 9 PSB Ltd, Hope PSB Ltd, and Moneymaster PSB Ltd to offer high-volume low-value transactions in remittance services, micro-savings and withdrawal services. We can only wait to see the competition become bullish, going forward.

Tech giant, Google, is seeking to invest in Africa through its accelerator programme.

Our correspondent explained that the accelerator programme is designed to run as a three-month virtual session for participating founders.

READ ALSO: Nigeria’s TalentQL launches tech career kickstarter initiative. 2 other things and a trivia

On eligibility, Startups expected to join the program should be located in Algeria, Botswana, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.

Payhippo, a Nigeria-based lending startup, closed a US$3 million seed funding round.

The report touched on how Payhippo intends to enhance its technology capabilities to support small businesses in Nigeria.

For the record, Payhippo was launched in January of last year by Chioma Okotcha, Uche Nnadi and Zach Bijesse.

Another Nigerian fintech startup has acquired a foreign startup.

Ripples Nigeria covered the details of the deal, citing how E-Settlement, the purchasing Fintech player, looks to use the acquisition of the Ivory Coast-based QuickCash help it expand across a host of other West African countries.

E-Settlement was founded by Olaoluwa Awojoodu in 2017 to provide financial services to different target markets through its platforms.

Meanwhile, a review of a new smartphone also made the list.

Launched in September, Realme 8i has been making a lot of buzz amongst users. The new device comes in two variants.

The base variant, with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, is priced at N101,000 on Jumia, while the higher variant with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage is priced at N120,000.

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