Kippa, the Nigerian fintech backed by investors like Saison Capital and Horizone, has transferred the operations of KippaPay, an agency banking product it shut down in October, to Bloc, a Nigerian fintech preparing to launch banking services. KippaPay will now be integrated into GPay, a payment subsidiary Bloc owns.
“[You can think of it as a handshake agreement as [Kippa] still owns the product,” Kennedy Ekezie, the cofounder of Kippa, told TechCabal during a phone call. He also shared that despite Bloc taking over the product, Kippa Pay still belongs to Kippa.
“The deal with Bloc was closed weeks ago,” Kennedy Ekezie, the cofounder of Kippa, told TechCabal on a phone call. “After speaking with several other companies, we chose to go with Bloc because they showed the most ability to provide immediate support for our merchants.”
Kippa shut down KippaPay after June’s Naira devaluation dramatically increased the cost of buying the POS terminals its banking agents use. In an intensely competitive market, those costs would have been impossible to recoup without raising the commission it charged its agents.
Bloc emailed existing users today, confirming that full service has been restored on KippaPay’s mobile app and Android terminal. It also shared instructions on resuming transactions on the agency banking platform.
Per the same email, service has not been fully restored to Linux terminals, which facilitate payment through the handheld POS device. A source close to Kippa told TechCabal that merchants had been directed to return their POS devices to Kippa. “Those who have not will be onboarded as GPay users,” they said.
TechCabal reached out to Bloc for comments but did not receive a response at the time of this report.
