Nigeria-based SME lending startup Payhippo has secured US$3 million in a seed funding round, according to a statement by the company.

The round was led by a number of African founders leading some of the continent’s biggest fintech companies. They included Ham Serunjogi and Maijid Moujaled, co-founders Chipper Cash (which recently raised US$150 million Series C), Flutterwave founder Olugbenga Agboola, Bolaji Balogun, CEO of Chapel Hill Denham, and founder of Metis Capital Partners Hakeem Belo-Osagie.

Other investors in the round included angels from Paystack, Brex, and Tala, limited partners from Payhippo’s pre-seed round, and institutional investors TEN13, VentureSouq, and Prodigio Capital.

“The funding will allow us to invest in hiring more engineers and data scientists. We aim to improve our technology and enhance our lending offerings as we continue to address the persistent financing gap for small businesses in Nigeria. At Payhippo, our vision is to provide millions of small businesses with sufficient and available capital to run and grow their businesses,”

Chioma Okotcha, Co-founder and COO of Payhippo, said.

Payhippo provides SME loans within three hours

Payhippo was founded in 2019 by Okotcha, Zach Bijesse, CEO, and Uche Nnadi, CTO. The company was part of Y Combinator’s Summer 2021 batch.

The startup offers short term working capital credit for SMEs in under three hours. Loans are sized at an average of US$1300. As borrowing companies improve their ‘Payhippo score’ through timely repayments, they become eligible for bigger loan tickets.

Payhippo’s backend technology undertakes KYC checks to verify cash flow data, business owner data, and industry data.
So far, the company has deployed 5000 SME loans in Nigeria. This doubles the number of loans since July this year, when it raised US$1 million in a seed round.

The company was growing by 25% month-on-month as of September this year, with US$64,000 earned from disbursed loans worth US$900,000. Its repayment rate stood at 97%.