Kippa, fintech startup, discontinues agency banking, plans layoffs in December

Kippa, a financial technology (fintech) firm, says it is discontinuing its offline payments product, also known as KippaPay.

This is coming less than two years after the product was launched.

Kippa is a bookkeeping and asset management application for small and medium-sized enterprises in sub-Saharan Africa.

In a statement published on its website on Wednesday, Kennedy Ekezie, Kippa’s chief executive officer (CEO), said the discontinuation will take effect on November 15, 2023.

Ekezie said the decision to close the product was driven by profit-related concerns, adding that employees handling the department would also be laid off by December.

“Over the past 18 months, we launched and grew this arm of our product suite to support merchants with offline payments and agency banking through our POS terminals,” Kippa said.

“This company decision is related to profitable product portfolio consolidation. This decision unfortunately means that the core of our team supporting the KippaPay product will be leaving us in December 2023.

“This has been an incredibly difficult decision for us to make, but we are incredibly proud of the work this team has done, and the impact KippaPay has had on our merchants.”

Kippa said it will provide support to merchants and partners to help them transition off the product and resolve any pending settlements.

In April 2022, the fintech firm launched KippaPay, a payment solution that allowed users to send and receive payments from clients and carry out extended payment transactions automatically

KippaPay has existed in the business with the likes of Opay, Moniepoint, and PalmPay amongst others.